It is a late Monday afternoon, and a small group is attending an Ojibwe language roundtable at the Gamgee Building, a gathering spot for Duluth's Native American community.

The group may have been small, but what they are doing is big music.

Okay, who is your pleasure?

Who is this?

Oh.

The first and foremost thing that we do is to come together as a community.

And I think it's important that to say that in this community that I'm not the teacher, and we don't look at things in the Western way of somebody as a teacher, and they got all the knowledge and they're going to give it to me and this and that.

But in a community setting that we come together and that we can help one another, we do the work.

And given the Shinobi to my ones, you do, what do you wish?

Come on them.

So when we come together like this year, now that we can help one another in the pursuit of, what you will more acquisition, language revitalization and usage today.

It's all informal.

It's called the language table and it's now 1 or 2 pointing.

I mean, you may not be math, as you may know, my, you are cardigan, Omaha.

This big building here is called the place where there's a beginning.

Things in a good way.

We begin things in a good way.

And so it's fitting that we come here in this way to come together as a community.

Cuz you, get a good condition, cause, I'm going to be singing, Gonzaga Square Gym Acog and doing japa.

I was the siendo dame, so I my name is Gail.

I live in Duluth.

I come from Leech Lake, and, I'm from the, Bullhead clan.

I've been coming, almost every Monday night for our language table.

And, I'm really a student of the language.

Still, I feel like I know a little bit.

So I say on guitar and in intelligibly, I speak a little bit of Ojibwe.

Well, so I'm really trying to learn more.

I think about my dad.

He was fluent speaker, my great grandma.

Maggie.

Come in.

She never spoke English.

She didn't learn how to speak English.

She only spoke whichever way.

So, and then my dad spoke.

And then on my mom's side, both her mom and dad spoke Ojibwe fluently also.

So I think about them when I am learning English.

The number of participants vary from week to week, and participation was high when the table first started.

But over the months, those numbers have dwindled.

There's so much enthusiasm in the beginning.

You have a large class.

It's standing room only, and as you go along, you get to the point where that, it's work.

And as a second language, learner.

So we've been immersed in, say, having emerged in English for 59 years.

So it's difficult.

I'd say it's one of the more difficult languages to learn and acquire.

But that doesn't stop us because we know it's, a lifelong endeavor to learn our language.

So always got the rest of our life.

So one of those nights are here.

The more around it, the more your, your, feel comfortable with it when we go.

Home and we try to practice, you know, as best we can.

In our busy lives, but we we.

Try.

I have four sons, and, two of the sons have children now.

And so I have a granddaughter, and, she's very interested.

And how do you say that?

How do you say that?

So then we go around and we just say words so that she can hear those words.

And she we have these little books that we've been doing in class.

And, like when we go to bed at night, she goes, Will you read that, Ojibwe book?

And I will read that to her every time that she comes over.

And then my other son, is a student at BSU, and he's going to graduate this this year.

So but he also works at an immersion program in Red Lake, and he has to, sons.

And he is speaking to them all the time.

So they are like understanding what he's saying.

And so that's pretty awesome.

The Ojibwe language will continue, but with the passing of elders, who are the first language speakers, that knowledge they possess about the language goes with them.

This group understands this, and their hope is the language will continue through the younger people.

I wish I would have learned more from my dad before he passed away, but, I mean, I remember everything that he's taught, taught me.

Part of that.

Loss.

Too, is like, I think it's comes from, you know, because our language was forbidden.

We were, you know, supposed to speak the language.

And I know that affects my family.

Like, I think if my mom spoke, maybe we wouldn't be speaking to.

I just hope that we learn a little bit more and try to speak more at home and then with our grandchildren.

So they learn more, too, and they continue on.

I know as their their only for right now the grandkids and they're going to come.

Back to Duluth and they're going to go to the immersion school here in Duluth.

So they're going to learn a lot.

So I want to be up there right with them when they're learning.

Bye bye.