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</p><h1 class="" style="margin:0px 0px 0.5em;padding:0px;font-size:26px;line-height:26px;color:rgb(50,50,50)">Ojibwe youth camp helps restore once-forbidden language</h1><div id="content-content" class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px">
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By <a href="http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/profiles/cynthia-boyd" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;color:rgb(19,93,177)">Cynthia Boyd</a>, <a href="http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/partners/minnpost" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;color:rgb(19,93,177)">MinnPost</a></div>
<div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px">August 12, 2013</div></span></div></div></div></div><p></p><p style="margin:0.5em 0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px">
My Norwegian-born grandmother, who arrived on America’s shores in 1912, played an outsize role in my childhood telling stories of what seemed to us her exotic homeland where children skied to school, had summer homes on the fjords and every Christmas baked hundreds of Scandinavian cookies for family and friends.</p>
<p style="margin:0.5em 0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px">Though she spoke English with a distinctive Norwegian accent, my darling, diminutive grandma who lived to 102, rarely spoke a word of her native tongue (never an “uff-da”), reverting only as she lay dying to the language of her birth in speaking out loud “The Lord’s Prayer.”</p>
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<br></div></div></div></div></div></div><p style="margin:0.5em 0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px">I see and treasure that Norwegian heritage playing out in my mother’s family even today with their northern Minnesota cabins in the pines, the foods we eat and our Christmas traditions, including hymns. (As youngsters, my sister and I sang the Lutheran hymn “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui7hmiItUeI" target="_blank" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;color:rgb(19,93,177)">I Am So Glad Each Christmas Eve”</a> in Norwegian to Grandma, bringing tears to her eyes. Waves of emotion still roll over me when I sing it.)</p>
<p style="margin:0.5em 0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px">But what if, as happened to the indigenous people of this state – the Ojibwe -- my grandmother had been fearful of sharing her Norwegian roots? What if not speaking her native language had not been her choice?</p>
<p style="margin:0.5em 0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,'Nimbus Sans L',FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px"></p><p style="margin:0.5em 0px;padding:0px">Access full article below: </p>
<div><a href="http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2013/08/12/ojibwe-youth-camp-helps-restore-once-forbidden-language">http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2013/08/12/ojibwe-youth-camp-helps-restore-once-forbidden-language</a><br>
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