1. Michael Blue Ojibwa Indian School

2. Goal for the project: Create. Maintain, and sustain a program that promotes the local culture, including Ojibwe and Metis. Project Goal #1: Create a culture committee. This goal was accomplished, we have a committee made up of staff, one student so far, and we are recruiting parents. Initial work is being done to begin professional development and researching a means to promote this project community wide. CULTURE AND LANGUAGE PROJECT

3. Project Objectives 2 & 3 were to address the physical appearance of the school to reflect local culture and to get the Principal and school leaders to demonstrate an understanding of and model the local culture. I feel that we still have some work to do to improve the aesthetic appearance of the school to reflect our local culture. However, this has been discussed and will be addressed. To assist in meeting goal 3, I have taken a course at our local college in traditional drumming, which includes other history and cultural teachings. We also have a classroom teacher who got certified to be a culture and language teacher this year and she will be moving to a full time culture and language teacher for the upcoming school year. CULTURE AND LANGUAGE PROJECT

4. In my final report for this project I stated that we did not completely meet all of the goals for this project, however, the amount that we learned throughout this process has opened our eyes to many opportunities. My own experience in taking the drumming course made me much more aware of what I need to do to keep my own traditions alive and made me more “in-touch” with our local traditions. This process also helped in getting one of our staff members to work with me and a group of students in creating our own school drum. We also learned a valuable lesson in how much our current staff does not know about our local traditions and teachings etc. By creating a schedule for the upcoming school year that includes culture and language classes for all students, I am showing my commitment to this initiative and hopefully modeling to the students and staff that the local culture and traditions are still alive at the Ojibwa Indian School. CULTURE AND LANGUAGE PROJECT