Term
Fall 2025
Capstone
Capstone Project
Degree Name
MAT
Facilitator(s)
Betsy Parrish
Content Expert
Lucas Rapisarda
Abstract
As an English language teacher in Minnesota, I have had many immigrant and refugee learners express a desire to understand the peoples, cultures, and histories of their new homes. As a settler colonist in Minnesota, I have an ethical obligation to counter the erasure of Indigenous peoples within our educational institutions and to grapple with the legacies of settler colonialism. These two threads come together in a project designed to respond to the question: How can land-based education and centering the voices of Native peoples be used to design lessons that foster adult ELLs’ reflection on Ojibwe nations’ unique relationships to plants and land in Minnesota? Motivated by the work of Indigenous scholars on anticolonial frameworks and land-based education and inspired by Nature for New Minnesotans - a Minnesota natural history curriculum for Adult English language learners (ELLs) - I designed a unit for intermediate level adult ELLs exploring the relationships between Ojibwe peoples and their homelands through the stories of manoomin (wild rice). The unit incorporates Native voices, perspectives, and wisdom and consists of four major sections: 1) an introduction to the Ojibwe through their migration story, Seven Grandfather teachings, and treaty-making, 2) an introduction to traditional manoomin harvesting and rice camps, 3) an exploration of the life cycle of manoomin and the gifts of manoomin to human and non-human relatives, and 4) an exploration of major threats to manoomin and Ojibwel nations’ actions to protect and care for manoomin.
Project Type
Curriculum
Keywords
Adult Education, Curriculum, ESL/ ELLs, Environmental Studies, Multicultural Education, Social Justice
Recommended Citation
Kmiecik, Azul, "Plants, Land, and Ojibwe Nations in the Adult English Language Classroom" (2025). School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects. 1157.
https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/hse_cp/1157
dc_type
text
dc_publisher
DigitalCommons@Hamline
dc_format
application/pdf
dc_source
School of Education Student Capstone Projects