Lorena Cote grew up speaking Saulteaux and English until she went to school. Cote, who is Anishnaabe-kwe from the Cote First Nation, thought everyone could speak Saulteaux.

When she spoke it at school, she was made fun of.

"It was kind of a shock, going from home to school to getting made fun of," Cote said. "I just quit speaking."

It took 25 years for Cote to realize that speaking her Native language was something to be proud of.

She could still understand Saulteaux — her uncles and her dad spoke to her in the language regularly — but she could no longer speak it fluently herself. She went to school for it, and has since mastered the language.

"It gave me a warm feeling, because my grandparents always pushed it," Cote said. "They wanted all of us to learn and when I started university, any homework I had, I'd got to my grandfather.

"He didn't know how to read and write it but I would ask him questions in English and he'd tell me in Saulteaux."

After relearning the language, Cote began teaching intro Saulteaux classes at the First Nations University of Canada. The more advanced classes were taught by her auntie, and when she retired, Cote assumed all the Saulteaux classes.

As is the case with many Indigenous languages, less and less people are learning Saulteaux in the home. Elders who speak the language are dying, Cote said. But in her classes, she's seeing young people who want to learn their language as an adult.

"I always tell them, 'your language is your identity — it tells you who you are,'" Cote said. "We just need programs that will suit our languages … we need to find our own system and how we teach."

Now, as a teacher, Cote can help make sure the language is passed down — just like her grandparents, father and uncles did when she was younger.

"It's deeper than English — it's a descriptive language where a lot of our words do not have an English meaning, but they have intentions or actions," she said. "We need our language for our ceremonies, for our stories, our histories."