December 1, 2023 —Over 100 people discussed the mental, emotional and spiritual “block” students can experience when learning their ancestral languages at a language conference in Winnipeg last weekend. “I had the idea about 30 years ago to have a conference where we would talk about the block,” said Patricia Ningewance, an Ojibway language speaker, teacher and writer who organized the First Language Reclamation Summit at the University of Manitoba. “It gets blocked in our throat and makes my language learning difficult.”Ningewance, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, is from Lac Seul First Nation in northwestern Ontario but has been living and working in Winnipeg for the past 40 years.
