Walking Together for a Better Future (Linda Kaser & Judy Halbert, 2011)

The recent introduction of Aboriginal Enhancement Agreements as part of the process of developing shared responsibility for Aboriginal Education has helped districts and community members realize the importance of working together to best meed the needs of Aboriginal learners in BC. Although signing these documents make them official, many questions have remained as to how to ensure the actions agreed to are implemented.

In 2008, the Director of the provincial Aboriginal Education Enhancement Branch approached the Network of Performance Based Schools (NPBS) to see if they were interested in developing a partnership focusing on how signed enhancement agreements could be best put into practice. This led to the development of the Aboriginal Enhancement Network of Schools (AENS) which has set about to help school districts and their Aboriginal communities in the development of cross-cultural understanding and Indigenous ways of knowing that encourage new perspectives on best practices for learning.

In the December 23, 2010 issue of the Seattle Times newspaper, columnist Murray Evans’ headline reported: Cherokee, Apple Partner to put language on iPhones.

Although 290 000 individuals belong to the Cherokee Nation, only about 8 000 Cherokee speakers remain. To combat this decline, tribal officials created a Cherokee-only language immersion school in Oklahoma in 2001 where children enrolled in kindergarten through grade 5 work on their laptops using a Macintosh operating system that recognizes the 85 Cherokee syllables that the blacksmith Sequoyah converted to written form in 1821.

In September 2010 after discussions and meetings with the Cherokee chief about developing more Cherokee language software, Apple announced they would release Cherokee applications for the iPod and iPhone. These apps allow individuals to continue communicating in Cherokee outside of the school environment and have started to appeal to people outside of the educational setting as well, illustrating the initial success of this innovative approach meant to strengthen cultural identity through indigenous language development.