Arts & Entertainment
Nokomis Learning Center: preserving culture without any help
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By Kelly Sheridan
The Meridian Times Reporter
The Nokomis Learning Center, located at 5153 Marsh Road in Okemos, is a non-profit Native American learning center whose mission is to preserve the history, arts and culture of the “people of the Three Fires”– the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe and present it to the community. The building contains an art gallery, exhibit classroom and gift shop. Founded in 1988, the Nokomis Learning Center is doing the best it can to preserve the culture from generation to generation. “Nokomis means ‘grandmother’ and grandmother was the primary teacher in the clans and the villages,” Victoria Voges, the Educational Director at Nokomis Learning Center, said. “One of our goals is to teach the culture and the history and hold it up so that’s why they named it Nokomis.”
The center provides tours to over 200 groups per year, and most of them come from local middle schools.