Community Cree
Our Cree language is slowly disappearing.
It is the aim of Alexander First Nation Education’s Community Cree Development program to bring about new and exciting ways to learn, engage, visualize and expose the Cree language around Alexander First Nation. Evening Cree classes are held at the Alexander Kipohtakaw Education Centre every Wednesday evening as well as the road Stop/Nâki signs that were put up around our reserve are just some ways we have tried to keep the language strong. We also had our first ever “Cree Talks” to get the people excited about learning. We hope to bring about new ways to return the Cree language back to the people of Alexander First Nation – Kipohtakaw Aski and for future generations to come.
Language revitalization is no easy task. As Harvard-educated nurse and lawyer Melissa Daniels can attest. In 2015 she was working with her First Nation in the northern portion of Alberta, Canada, to document traditional laws by conducting interviews with community Elders. However, the young woman was missing out on a lot of the information due to her lack of fluency in the Elders’ native tongue. After relying on translators to try to parse together the traditional laws and customs, Daniels decided to move back to her home territory and learn the native language herself, in order to fully understand the aboriginal culture.
