Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Braiding Meaning: A Three-Pronged Exploration of Ojibwe Poetry, Ojibwe Culture, and the Themes in Firekeeper’s Daughter”

Through a study of contemporary Ojibwe poetry, students will deepen their understanding of themes in Firekeeper’s Daughter involving community, self-trust, and Ojibwe culture and create poems of their own

As told to Poetry Magazine in this article, three Ojibwe poets, Kimberly Blaeser, Molly McGlennen, and Margaret Noodin, used a “braid-like collaborative process” to jointly create the poems in “Meshkadoonaawaa Ikidowinan: Exchanging Words.” The process would begin by one of the poets writing an opening line to the poem; then, another poet would add to this opening line with a line or two of their own, sometimes shifting the entire direction of the poem; they’d continue to take turns in this way among the three of them, sometimes adding in new lines and other times shuffling around existing words in the poems. Ojibwe words (known as the Anishinaabemowin language) are woven into the poem.

Mirroring the braiding process of the Ojibwe poet, this exercise will be broken into three parts: