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.
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.
"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."
That's why she invented the SkoBot. It's a customizable toy robot designed to get Indigenous children excited to learn their languages.
"I can say 'Hey SkoBot, what is bear?' And it will say, 'Bear is makwa, makwa,' and it'll repeat it, right? So I can say, 'What is crane?' It'll say, 'Crane is ajijaak, ajijaak.'"
SkoBots use a form of artificial intelligence to speak Indigenous languages, and they're small enough to mount on the user's shoulder. They sort of resemble mini R2-D2 droids, from Star Wars, except these robots are designed to look like woodland creatures and decorated in Native American florals.
Through a nonprofit she started when she was 18, Boyer, now 25, has mentored hundreds of Native American children across the country, teaching them to build SkoBots of their own. One of them is 12-year-old Holden Hoy in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
"I was already a big fan of robotics and how they work, how you can bring inanimate objects to life," he said. "And I'm Ojibwe, and so I've always wanted to save the Ojibwe language."
Hoy, a rising seventh grader, showed off his design at an end of the year science fair at his school, JKL Bahweting Anishinaabe School in Sault Ste. Marie. Like Boyer, he is a member of the Sault Tribe.
He programmed his SkoBot to answer three questions ahead of his presentation. One of them was, "What's your name," to which the robot would respond in Hoy's voice: "Aaniin, Hello. Sabe indizhinikaaz, Bahweting indoonjibaa. I was built by Holden Hoy. I will not gain sentience and take over the world. Or will I?"
Hoy named his SkoBot Sabe, which means Bigfoot in Anishinaabemowin. In Ojibwe culture, Bigfoot represents honesty, one of seven sacred teachings.
His classmates and their parents stopped by his booth to see Sabe in action. Boyer was there too, helping Hoy with his presentation.
"I'm very happy that people are actually coming to this booth," Hoy said. "I'm happy that they are learning things, and I'm really happy that I'm part of the Ojibwe."
Sabe has one eye, a sensor that detects movement and lets it know to start listening.
"Basically when it hears that one trigger word, it then plays a prerecorded audio file. So there isn't synthetic speech, there isn't any generative AI," said Boyer. "It's simply listening to what you're saying, identifying it and playing [audio files] that already exist."
That means the SkoBots will never make things up, often called AI hallucinations. Hoy said it's important not to use generative AI. "AI tends to falsify things a lot, not get things from trustworthy sources."
Boyer's goal isn't to replace interactions with real language speakers. Instead, it's to get kids interested in not only their languages, but in subjects like science, math and engineering as well. That includes getting them to think about how to use AI ethically.
"Artificial intelligence, especially when it's not created by Indigenous people, stands to do a lot of harm to our communities," she said. "When you are putting accurate information into these models … you're giving away sacred information to companies that don't have our best interests at heart."
And as chatbots have become more popular, Boyer said some people have turned to them to help them learn their languages. She's even seen large language models like ChatGPT invent fake words in Anishinaabemowin, which she said is dangerous. "If we're not learning our language correctly, we shouldn't learn it at all."
Jocelyn Hoy is Holden's mom. She's excited that her son is not only exposed to their culture, but he's eager to know more. She said he's even been teaching her new things.
"As someone who, at a time in my life, did not want to be identified as Native American … now as an adult, I cannot wait to learn more, and I think the SkoBots are going to help me and so many kids — so many people in general — learn their heritage and who they are."
Holden Hoy said that heritage and the language are inseparable: "The language is the culture!"
He added, "It is important to protect it, because it's some people's way of life. Generation after generation is based around this culture."
Edited by: Steve Drummond and Lauren Migaki
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
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