A working project to keep Anishinaabemowin alive

OIATC has published a project section for Anishinaabemowin, a live, community-owned effort to keep the language alive through the next twenty years. The stakes are in the numbers. The 2021 Census put the average age of the Ojibway mother-tongue population at 48, the second oldest among the major Algonquian languages, and fluent speakers are concentrated among Elders on both sides of the border.

This is not a plan waiting for funding. A corpus pipeline, a first lesson app, and transcription and translation helpers are already running, and a suite of Anishinaabemowin learning games shipped on Minoo, the community platform built on Waaseyaa. The work is organized into four streams on one principle, that the technology serves the relationships and not the other way around: record fluent speakers now, build low-pressure places to hear the language, ship a structured course on a shared open core, and keep the language content community-controlled and gated even as the code stays open source. It is led by Russell Jones in Sagamok Anishnawbek and built on Waaseyaa, the framework OIATC stewards.

The page is the project's public home, not a finished statement. It carries a dated progress log, newest first, that will be extended as the work proceeds, so anyone can follow what has shipped and what is still being decided. Read it at /anishinaabemowin.