Meet the robots programmed by kids to speak their Indigenous languages

Education Meet the robots programmed by kids to speak their Indigenous languages July 26, 20265:00 AM ET By  Kadin Mills Holden Hoy (right) is building a robot to help him learn the Ojibwe language Anishinaabemowin, an endangered Native American language. Hoy's mentor, Danielle Boyer (left), is teaching him skills including coding and electrical circuitry. Kadin Mills/NPR hide caption toggle caption Kadin Mills/NPR SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. — The idea came to Danielle Boyer in a toy store. The inspiration? It was Tickle Me Elmo. "Whenever you'd press his belly, he would talk, and he would teach you things," she said. "There are toys that teach us in English, but there aren't toys that teach us Anishinaabemowin. And I wanted that to be different." Anishinaabemowin includes the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe languages. Exact estimates vary, but there are fewer than 10,000 people in the U.S. who speak Anishinaabemowin. That number is around 25,000 in Canada. Some Native languages have just a few dozen fluent speakers, while others have none. Sponsor Message Boyer has seen how quickly language loss can happen. Her grandmother speaks Anishinaabemowin, but she is one of the last fluent speakers of their dialect. Education 'We survived, we are resilient': Remembering U.S. Indian boarding schools "It is devastating to feel like your language could be lost," said Boyer, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. "You lose your culture, you lose a way to describe who you are." U.S. Indian boarding schools played a major role in the loss of Indigenous languages. Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children. Today, some Native youth are learning their languages in schools. But Boyer said many of them still aren't invested. "They see it as another homework assignment." Boyer and Hoy work on some last-minute adjustments to his AI-powered SkoBot before p...