♪[Music]♪ - [Eli] I'm fascinated with the way language is central to our world view as indigenous people. I'm a Néhiyaw artist and curator living on Lekwungen territory in Victoria, BC. My personal research centers around language revitalization and how it connects us to our cultures and lands. Over the past few years, I've been on a journey to learn the Cree language. It's been a challenging and incredibly rewarding experience. Now I want to travel to Alberta, where my ancestors are from, to discover the ways that different communities are revitalizing their languages. My mother and I both grew up not knowing anything about our Cree family because she was adopted out at birth as part of the Sixties Scoop. Twelve years ago, we met our Cree family, and since then I have been in a process of connecting with the community in Wabasca, Alberta, the place where my kohkom, my grandmother Florence, was born. I recently met Nora Yellowknee, an administrator at the local school, Oski Pasikoniwew Kamik. After realizing that we were second cousins, she offered to help me learn about my family tree. [Nora] You have your grandmother, -- Florence. And her mother is Isabelle. And then, I'm here. And your grandmother. And your mom? Fancine. [Nora] They are first cousins or second cousins. - [Eli] Okay. - [Nora] And you're down here. [Eli] I'm down there? [Eli] Yeah, this is more than, -- a lot more than I knew before I met you, before I came up. [Nora] Yeah, that's Isabelle. Nohkom Isabelle. This means a lot to me to see this, -- again, -- because the more that I see it the more that I hear about this and talk about it. It's going to stick and -- I now understand more and know more through that process [Nora] My dream for the language here, starting with the school, is to have our people who speak the language, speak it every day, because we are not getting that. There are many Cree speakers working here, but they are not speaking it. For people, the young families now, the young mothers speak Cree to their children. And all the rest of it will follow. Seeing a photo of my kohkom Florence as a young woman created a sense of healing and re-connection after feeling disconnected for most of my life. Knowing more about my family's history has allowed me to connect deeper with my ancestors. There is so much more to discover but, like learning the language, this will take time. The Kapaskwatinak Cultural Education Center is a place for the Children of Wabaska to connect to the land and their culture. Knowledge Keeper Lorraine Cardinal helps guide the children through land-based education including coming-of-age ceremonies. I'm excited to learn about these teachings since I didn't have the opportunities to experience them, growing up disconnected from community and family. [Lorraine Cardinal] The reason that -- I do these things, like the coming-of-age, because it's also my responsibility as a Néhiyaw school to protect the children, creator's children. And when I'm protecting creator's children, -- we need to teach them those protocols, we need to teach those values. They need to know them so that they don't end up getting hurt in the future. And that shame of our language, and who we are, and our ceremonial ways; losing those has caused big destruction in our communities. Because our children, as they're growing up, they know who they are, they came with the gift of knowing who they are. I have a responsibility to pass those teachings on to other children too, because they will experiment, they will explore, and we want to prevent them from hurting each other or hurting themselves, right? [Drumming and chanting] [Lorraine Cardinal] They call that oskinîkiskwew ēkwa oskinîkîwiw, young manhood and young womanhood. I want to thank you and honour you for coming into this world. You are a blessing to us. We are so very honored to have you as part of us, nêhiyaw-iskwêw. Always remember to hold your head up, don't be ashamed and -- always accept yourself for who you are, and honour those gifts you brought with you, -- and welcome into womanhood. Welcome. It truly is a blessing and an honour to have you as a young nêhiyaw-iskwêw, A young nêhiyaw woman. Welcome. [Children talking] [Lorraine Cardinal] Somehow, someway -- fear got instilled in us as indigenous people. Shame got instilled in us as indigenous people. Our children, what they experienced here today taught them how sacred they are, how important they are, how beautiful they are, and that they're not just beautiful in physical form. that they're beautiful in spiritual form too. All we need to do is believe in them, to love them, and to tell them they're important. They'll start feeling good about themselves. I'm proud of them. Their spirit is still alive and well. What do you see being the way forward so that these young ones in the community -- can not only understand the language and its relationship to their spirit, and their relationship to the land and each other and themselves, but be speaking it? How do you feel about -- the future of the language in these next generations to come? We have to believe in ourselves to be able to do it, -- and we need to set our goal. And if it's revitalizing the language, then let's do that. How did we learn Cree? We learnt it sitting around with the old people, visiting each other and -- our parents speaking to us, you know? So we can get it back. We just need to do it. John Bigstone is a Wabasca elder who carries vast spiritual and ceremonial knowledge. He invited me to the land where he holds sweat lodge ceremonies to share teachings about the spirit within our languages. [Music] [Inhales deeply] It clears your mind when you breathe in this smudge. English language is inadequate -- if you're going to describe spirit. Anything of spirit. It's inadequate. They named it according to their connection to that plant because they spoke to the plant They had a connection. They had a connection to all of life. They understood their environment. They understood that everything was alive, -- and your spirit has a connection with that spirit of mother earth and everything that grows on her body. Prior to contact, everything was described in a more spiritual way. Mîtos you know, has a spiritual meaning. Sihta as in spiritual meaning. That's the poplar and the spruce. I stutter coming back to the language where our families have had these interruptions -- of residential school, the 60s' scoop. I'm curious what your thoughts are -- about those of us with this blood in us, and whose ancestors have spoken the language, and whether you think that we have it inside of us just waiting to come out, -- this bone memory or blood memory of the language. Yeah, it's in your DNA. It's programmed in there already. You just have to wake up that programming. That's why you're here, see? It's that programming, and your spirit guide. You've got to remember, there's a spiritual aspect to this. You're never alone. You never walk alone. Your ancestors, your Cree ancestors, walk with you. They're assigned to you to guide you where you need to be. That's the beauty of this understanding of spirit. It happens in spirit. We are the result of spirit in action. We become material. That's a deeper teaching. But the reality is, every one of us have spirit guides around us. I was on kind of a lost path before I found my way to my first lodge. And it's interesting to think of these -- European modalities or academic ways of describing how things are working. And the way that I explain it to people is I don't know how it's working, I just know it is working for me. And it's not something I'm trying to figure out up here, I just know it's working down here. And I think it has connected my heart and my spirit in ways that weren't happening before. When I say a prayer in the social gathering, I say it in Cree because it's an insult to my ancestors if I pray in English. It's the very thing that oppressed me as a child. I can't do that. I have to speak and pray in Cree. That's what I do and I explain, you know, why. Because I'm not praying to the people. I'm praying to the spirits that are guiding me. They don't have to understand what I'm saying. Because as long as a spirit hears, the spirit will come. And they understand my language, the Cree language. Once I identify myself, they say, "Huh, our grandson is praying. Let's go support him." That's the beauty of our language. What happened to our language -- came from the time of the residence in school, the first time it was introduced, -- not only the Cree but the many tribes themselves. When they took away the children, -- they took the children away from the land, -- the language, their ancestors, their grandfathers, their grandmothers, their teachers, their parents, their aunts and uncles. That's when the separation happened. They broke that connection. So when he took us away, -- they severed that connection to all of those things. We were taught a foreign way of thinking. I was programmed as a child. Now, I have to deprogram myself, sometimes referred to as decolonization, as they gave us that colonized mentality. And it just did not fit with our paradigm, how we saw our place in creation. At some point, somebody's got to wake up. One day, you've got to say, "Hey, there's something wrong here." This is the time. That's why we're here. To wake the people up. To wake ourselves up. Still be the guiding light, you know. There is a different way. So, it's about connection. That's what was severed -- in the time of the residential school. We lost connection to our spirit. It replaced the creator outside of us instead of in here. We're trying to mend that rift. That's what you're doing. That rift that was caught; you are the stitch that is bringing those two worldviews -- but to where they start respecting our way, the Cree way. When you have love, when you feel love -- and somebody tells you something that your spirit is looking to hear like, "Welcome home." Where do you feel it? Right here. You're connecting. You'll always have that sense of belonging -- because you come home. Yeah. So once you come home, you know where to come next time you're out there, wandering, -- you have a connection there. You've made some connections already here. You're no longer disconnected. I left my conversation with John feeling like I belong in a way that I've never felt before. It was an incredibly powerful experience that made me feel more connected to my spirit. Tell me again, like, your family story with Wabasca. My mother grew up there, my father grew up in Grouard, -- a couple hours away, and she didn't want to raise me on the reserve. So as soon as they found out about me, they moved away. And when we move to Edmonton, through the teen years, through my adult years, that's when the reconnection really started to happen, going home more happen. Before that, I would only visit, like, holidays, few times a year. Dusty Legrand is the creator of the clothing label Mobilize Waskawēwin. Using the ancient writing system of Cree syllabics and his designs, he's making the language visible to a new generation. Yeah, so this was the -- - it has the -- - Oh yeah, the different languages, tribes of the north. Yeah, it tells the story of -- a bunch of people. And it was really special to hear, like, the feedback from different people that had never seen their nation represented on a .... There were certain people that; this was like their first time. They're like, "I'm just buying this just because I've never seen my nation represented." Yeah, then I put revolution down the arm just to let them know what's going on. [Laughs] I've been always wanting to create a clothing brand. So to be able to create something that can empower indigenous youth and educate them on the indigenous history, on the future, on values and what it means to be indigenous. So Mobilize was a way that I could give voice to the voiceless. I could give a voice to the youth. To do it in a different way than I had seen being done, -- it was very important to me. To do it completely different, to represent the funky people, to represent the different people, to represent everybody that's ostracized that way and especially as indigenous people, like, that's been done to us. Okay. So this is the first drawing of this shirt. So, a lot of, like, the pieces will come, and they'll come at certain times, when I'm driving, when I'm listening to certain things. And they'll come and if I don't write it the way it's supposed to be, the idea won't stay. I want to try to encompass all of Canada and I'm gonna try to reach as many as I can. So for me this was like a lot of studying, a lot of research to try to see as far east as I could go and see what nations are there. And that's what is special about the language I find. It's that the stories, and the purpose, and everything exists within the language. That's in kind of a place that it's been locked. And it remains, and even though -- the assimilation has taken a lot of, like, -- our connection to community, our ceremonies, our practices. The language has kept all of that. How did you get the Cree word? Yes, well, the Cree word is on the back of this one here. Okay. So I just keep it as like Mobilize is the English version and then Waskawēwin, which is the Cree word for movement, is the Cree element that comes in. Mobilize didn't have a translation. But I also didn't want to just translate mobilize, I wanted to use movement as the word. So one thing that I really liked about the word waskawēwin was the presence of the triangular symbols, and for me these represented, like, two tipis and kind of represented the tribe that way. Being a part of Reuben's class was really special to understand the fundamentals of and to learn the history of the star chart and to learn the history of syllabics. Yeah, it was like learning indigenous history through the spirit mechanism. That was really special. He kind of just takes you back and he tells you the stories. And he takes you through a journey through story of the significance of the numbers of the grandfather directions, the grandmother directions. Yeah, înîw. And what does that mean, înîw? It's a collapsed word. Iyiniw actually is the way it's said. From what I understand; -- talk a little bit about colonization -- and taking over lands, the lands of original people; -- what I understand, first thing you got to do is you got to get rid of those people's deity, the name, and replace it with yours when you're colonizing people. So our dename for Néhiyaw people was aî, -- and we have a different paradigm as far as dogma is concerned. You are aîs, I am aîs, so a diminutive of aî. So aîsînîw. But this is a collapsed version of that iyiniw, înîw. Wow, 3D. Iskotew. Iskotew. Fantastic. So we have a relationship with the earth, and that relationship is that we relate to her as mother. So she when she brings forth those different people -- the plant people, the different ones, that's sâkipakâw coming out of the trees, out of the grass. And so she's showing us what love is. It's practical. So she'll give us all of this. We will be nurtured by it. The dandelions somewhere and different grasses. The four-legged people will eat from that. We will, in turn, get our sustenance from the four-legged people, but she's giving us all of that, showing us that love. Now, sâki is the morpheme of that word. And if I were to say to you, "I love you," I would say ki-sākihitin. Some people say ki-sāki-itin, and I say ki-sākihitin. That's how I've been taught: ki-sākihitin. I love you or you are loved by me. So that's a good word to learn to say to your loved ones. That's one of the only words that I know to say to my partner. [Laughs] Yes, and see how that it's coming into bloom. It's gonna start blossoming. It'll continue to grow and then it'll go through its cycle, -- just like we will come into a relationship with others. This really sticks out to me, when I came here last summer, -- as a special place. Not only Amy's piece, but the other artwork and it's kind of perched over the river. When did you begin learning about syllabics and the spirit marker system? When we were liberated from residential school, probably 1970 or 1971, I don't remember. I was just young. and the late Rosana Hole and late Caroline Hunter would come in and teach us about them, me and my peers. So that's when I started learning the system that I know about. And it was made so simply for me to learn it -- that I passed it on the way that was taught to me, and I guarantee that people will master that writing system. I always tell the ones that are coming in to learn, "Take your page and go to the center." I tell them, "That's where we're gonna start off." because we're used to writing from the top to the right, left to right, left to right. But in this one, -- you go from the center and you start from inside. So there's the center there. I'll go left of center and write the first one, -- and that's this one here. This one is a phonetic language. So that one says ah. And it's also the sound. The first sound that people will make -- when they're praying and worshiping. They'll say something like, "â-kisemanito". They'll describe that supreme being -- and the supreme being's name, this part of this as well. Ā. Ā someone then will say, "Â-Mâmaw-ôhtâwîmâw", -- describing again. They'll endear themselves to that supreme being by calling that supreme being father of all. "Â-Mâmaw-ôhtâwîmâw". So I say, "ah-hay" in recognition. There's you, me and the supreme being. [Eli] "Ay-hay". [Reuben] "Ay-hay". A lot of people say, "hi-hi" - That's what I've learned. - That's probably -- how you've heard it quite a bit. So that one near says, "â", this one says "pa" There's that "pah-pe" So, it goes: "â", "pa", "ta", "la". And there's four of them, like I said, going off into the east: "Mi", "ni", "yi", "si", "ki", "ji", "ri". And there's seven of them, like I said. There's seven tectonic plates -- going off into the south, is the same vowel sound. And then into the southwest, there's what I like to call the anomaly. It's a e vowel sound. "Me", "ke", "ne", -- "ye", "se", "je", "re". A vowel sound "o". And thank you Dr. James Makokis for correcting me on that. I used to go "oh", borrowing from English. She said that, "O isn't it ooh?" and I said, "Hey yeah, that's right." "O", "wo", "po", "to", "lo". And then they're smaller -- and these are way smaller than the big ones, big spirit markers, small spirit markers here. To complete -- what Dr. Marilyn Shirt has called the star chart. So the one I told you, -- "Ki-sâ-kih-itin", -- that's, "You are loved by me or I love you." Kisâkihitin. Yeah, "Ki" - "Kisâkihitin". So that's the writing system there. My hope is that it will help to instill pride in those -- for those young people -- because this is a racist country -- and it was born out of racism. And of course racism disconnects people. This one connects us. And all have access to it, -- whatever ethnicity you are from. It all makes sense to everybody. It can make sense to everyone and we can start connecting. What they taught us in the residential schools is that we were worth less than Europeans. And this one teaches us that: "Pahpeyakwan iyikohk". We all have the same measurements as far as humanity. Our DNA says that we're all the same. I want to thank you so much for sharing about this because -- I can see the the brilliance and sophistication -- within the way you've shown and explained, and it piques my interest and makes me want to learn more. It makes me want to move out here so I could take one of your classes. - [Reuben] Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing this. An honor and a privilege. ♪[Music]♪