Indigenous languages in this school · in preparation

Nehiyawewin — the Cree Language

The language of the Nehiyawak, the Cree peoples — a close kin of Anishinaabemowin in the Algonquian family, and the largest Indigenous language grouping in Canada.

In preparation — in partnership with the Cree nations' own speakers. The goal is the whole collection in Nehiyawewin: every book to read and to hear, here and in the school. Nothing is published until they have guided and reviewed it.

The language

Nehiyawewin is not one dialect but a continuum — Plains, Woods, Swampy, Moose, and East Cree, with Atikamekw in the wider family — of the Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi continuum, Central Algonquian, its homeland running from Alberta to Labrador across the plains and the subarctic. The teacher's door below stands in Plains Cree, the Y-dialect. Which dialect, and which writing, a Cree edition of this collection would stand in is a community question, not decided here.

Cree scripture is old: a full Bible in the Eastern dialect stood in syllabics in 1861, and Western portions were printed from 1855. No Cree text has yet been recovered into this collection. Recovery, when it comes, follows the same verified standard as the other peoples' — from the Cree's own published texts, public-domain status proven before a word is set here — and the collection's own Cree edition waits for the partnership.

In this school

In this school, the place of Nehiyawewin is being prepared on the same terms as the library's: no Cree lesson, reader, or word list will be made here until Cree educators have guided and reviewed it. When the door opens, it opens whole — every level of learning, to read and to hear, in the school as in the library.

A teacher's door — Solomon Ratt

This door was opened by a lesson the publisher himself shared: Solomon Ratt, building a Plains Cree verb the way you would build a house. The person marker at the front and the verb ending at the back never move, and everything between — past tense, the "want to" preverb, the verb itself — slots in between, each piece colour-coded; then he runs one verb, combing my hair, through every tense to prove the frame holds. Speech and writing together, given away free to whoever will learn.

Solomon Ratt is a member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, born in a trapper's cabin on the Churchill River near Stanley Mission, Saskatchewan, and taken to the residential school in Prince Albert at the age of six — a survivor who kept his language because his parents kept speaking it at home in the summers. He has taught Cree at the First Nations University of Canada since 1986 — Associate Professor of Indigenous Languages, Arts and Cultures, now retired — teaching in the Y-dialect, Plains Cree, and was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit for his lifetime of Cree language revitalization work.

His books and houses: mâcinêhiyawêwin / Beginning Cree (University of Regina Press, 2016); Cree Cultural Teachings and storytelling sessions carried on the Cree Literacy Network; the Cree Language Videos Facebook group, which he created so distance learners could both see the language written and hear it spoken — introductions, verb conjugations, tenses, and the stories of Wîsahkîcâhk — grown to over 3,000 members; and readers he helped write and translate for First Nations University.

In the same house

His dictionary-standing companions: Jean Okimāsis, nēhiyawēwin: paskwāwipīkiskwēwin / Cree: Language of the Plains, and Arok Wolvengrey, nêhiyawêwin: itwêwina / Cree: Words. The pattern his lesson teaches this programme is the language's own frame, taught by its own teacher, in speech and writing together — the shape these doorways were built to honour.

The writing

Plains Cree is written in the Standard Roman Orthography — macrons marking the long vowels, as in nēhiyawēwin — and in Cree syllabics, the writing carried across the Cree world since the 1840s. The Standard Roman Orthography is promoted by the Cree Literacy Network; no single dialect standard has emerged over the whole continuum, and which writing a future Cree learning room would stand in first is a community question, not decided here.

Hear Nehiyawewin today

These voices are the Cree people's own, published by their own teachers and houses. The link takes you to their house; nothing of their voice is copied here.

Cree Literacy Network — Cree Cultural Teachings and storytelling sessions, the language written and spoken by its own teachers
Cree Language Videos — the Facebook group Solomon Ratt created for distance learners: introductions, verb conjugations, tenses, and the stories of Wîsahkîcâhk, to see the language written and hear it spoken

An open invitation

Teachers: if you teach Nehiyawewin — in a community school, a college, or at a kitchen table — this school asks for your guidance before it makes a single lesson. In this collection the holy names are never invented: what the Creator is called in a language is for its own speakers to give, and the spelling of every text is theirs to settle. Write to the publisher at [email protected].

Authority stays with the Cree nations themselves, and each nation will be approached for itself.

To hear it

When Nehiyawewin opens here, it will be heard as well as read — in its own voice, spoken and recorded by Cree speakers. Until then this door is silent in Cree on purpose: the first voice heard in it should be the people's own.

The other doors

This doorway carries no advertising.