The Inuit make no bones about it. Theirs is a hunting culture; but what does that mean? Most Inuit still eat a solid diet of country food, which is just like it sounds, traditional foods such as caribou, whale, seal, fish and so on. Hunting remains a central practice in Inuit communities. So is that…
Category: Cree vocabulary
Idle No More: some ideas for Cree language revitalisation (resource focus)
Though it hasn’t been much apparent in the past year, this blog started as a Cree language blog, and I’m going to take us back into that today to discuss Cree language revitalisation. First, if you haven’t checked it out yet, I have compiled many resources to help people access Cree language materials. There are…
napatêhkasikan, my pumpkin pie adventure.
napatêhkasikan cî ahpô wîhkihkasikan? Pie, or cake? Answering “both” is of course understandable, but I like to think that just as some people are ‘dog’ people while others are ‘cat’ people, some of us will take a pie over a cake any day. The harvest season here in Quebec is different than in Alberta, as…
kiyam, let it be, let it be…
During the ‘wearing us as costumes‘ discussion, one poster suggested to another that he ” kiyam-pi”. To me this word, kiyam, contains a glimpse into a world-view that is very much at the core of Cree-ness. I have had this word explained to me and modelled for me many times. Each time I feel like I…
Cree kinship terms
In the Language and Culture Links section of this blog I used to link to a Cree Family Unit site that I stumbled across years ago. Unfortunately it is no longer available, and the site domain which is saskschools.ca has been taken over by some spam site. (I’m keeping the next paragraph just in case…