This blog really started as a Cree language blog over two years ago. Back then, all I wanted to do was celebrate and explore nêhiyawêwin. It was a way for me to keep using my language even though I had moved to Montreal and was far from my home territory. I have spoken often of…
Category: Fluency
The reports of our cultural deaths have always been greatly exaggerated
To hear non-Indigenous people tell it, we’ve been teetering on the edge of extinction since not too long after Contact. That narrative hasn’t changed much over the years, though the cause of our cultural and perhaps even physical demise has varied somewhat in the details. There have been moments of colonial guilt over past policies,…
Roadblocks to effective indigenous language development.
“Years ago while visiting his grandma Lucinda Robbins in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, CEO Don Thornton purchased a Cherokee-English Dictionary written by a professor from the local University. When he showed the dictionary to his grandma, she commented in a frail but angry voice: “That man used to come to my house for three years asking how…
Hunters/gatherers to trappers/harvesters. Does it matter what they call us?
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…
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…