Meg Noodin<\/a>\u2019s keynote talk, however, conference attendees sang a traditional Ojibwe children\u2019s song, \u201cGiizis Binoojiyag,\u201d in unison. As conference attendees squinted at the Anishinaabe lyrics projected on the screen, doing their best to echo Noodin\u2019s mellifluous verse, the room instantly filled with the warmth of song, bringing a seemingly \u201clost\u201d language to life.<\/p>\n[soundcloud url=”https:\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/207999859″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” \/] Sound clip via Courtney Danforth <\/i><\/p>\n
Noodin, a linguist, poet, and activist, brought energy, clarity, and compassion to her keynote \u2013 \u201cWeweni, Take Care\u201d \u2013 at this year\u2019s Computers and Writing conference. A Wisconsin native, Noodin first shared the history of the Ojibwe, tracing the ways in which Anishinaabe words often contain multitudes of meaning. The word for \u201clanguage,\u201d for example, encompasses not only literate activity, but also an awareness of how words sound and the ways in which sounds impact meaning. Star stories in Anishinaabe also impact the ways that stories are told; perhaps most strikingly for the Computers and Writing audience, a teacher in a star story is represented in a warrior pose with a strung bow-and-arrow, ready to shoot knowledge into the world. Through Noodin\u2019s examples, it became clear that studying Anishinaabe was a way into re-considering the multimodal possibilities of writing itself; exploring other cultural and linguistic traditions brought to light the clear affordances that linguistic diversity can offer in both conference and classroom spaces.<\/p>\n
One of the most powerful moments of the talk was when Noodin shared a recording of a poem, \u201cAabjito\u2019Ikidowinan,\u201d by Heid Erdrich. Accompanied by an animation of the verse\u2019s words (see below), the recording communicated most powerfully the ways in which digital media could be leveraged to capture \u00a0not only the possibilities for creative expression in language, but also to make more visible linguistic and cultural traditions that may otherwise go unacknowledged and forgotten. Noodin, in fact, described efforts from other organizations to encourage Ojibwe youth to re-capture their cultural traditions, but their approach to create a website with each \u201cdead\u201d language pictured next to a coffin, was both strikingly macabre and rhetorically ineffective. Noodin\u2019s approach of sharing living and breathing examples of Anishinaabe verse does the powerful work of showing how little-known languages can establish strong connections within communities.<\/p>\n