The melody of kids singing O Canada in Cree rings through Joe A. Ross School’s intercom speakers and echoes through the building. It’s how classes at the Opaskwayak Cree Nation school start each morning, but their use of Cree doesn’t end there.
The school’s Cree immersion program spans seven classrooms, with students ranging from nursery to Grade 6. Students in the English language program also take a 30-minute Cree course each day.
Principal Karon McGillivary, whose parents told her not to speak Cree when she was a child, says she never could have imagined a school like hers “in my wildest dreams.”
“That’s what our goal was, to be able to hear our children speak the language again,” she told CBC News at the school on Monday.
“It is very powerful to hear when our students are starting to understand and speak.”
The program started 20 years ago, after community members saw a decline in Cree speakers and worried the language would be lost.
Now about 200 of the school’s 500 students are in the immersion program. The program has also introduced an apprenticeship program to attract new teachers, as well as a land-based component. The community sits about 520 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, near the Saskatchewan border.
McGillivary says the Cree language holds more than words, encompassing culture, land and identity. The ability for younger generations to pick up the language is vital to the community’s future and for reconciliation, she said.
“No matter what happened in the past, you know, [I tell them] you are here today. You’re here learning your way of life to move on to Mino Pimâtisiwin, the good life.”
The community’s end goal is to build a school fully immersed in Cree, but McGillivary says parents in Opaskwayak are often hesitant to send their children into the immersion program out of fear that it will hurt their proficiency in English.
She says that apprehension appears to be dwindling slowly, as the school saw a three per cent rise in students enrolled in the Cree program this year.
“It really benefits them, cognitively,” she said. “They’re experiencing both languages, so they’re constantly interacting.”
Cree is the most commonly spoken Indigenous language by Indigenous people in Manitoba, with just over 13,000 speakers recorded in Statistics Canada’s 2021 census.
Indigenous language revitalization and preservation were also among the 94 Calls to Action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which urged the federal government to adequately fund initiatives that advance the diversity of Indigenous languages spoken in Canada.
Ronin Hall, a Grade 3 student in the Cree immersion program, says he speaks Cree at home with his mom. He’s excited to learn Cree, and his favourite things to learn so far have been colours, the seven teachings, and the Cree alphabet.
The eight-year-old wants to continue learning Cree as he grows, saying he wants to speak the language “everyday to my friends, to my mom, to my dad, to my brothers.”
Kiefer Pelly, a Grade 5 student in the English language program, is also picking up Cree and speaks with his grandparents, who are both fluent.
He says it’s important to learn Cree. He wants to teach his children in the future, and encourages other students to do the same.
“They just need to learn it so they can pass it on [from] generation to generation.”
Kids wearing orange shirts filled the hallways to head outside for recess on Monday, with the walls decorated in “Every Child Matters” artworks by the students in honour of The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Tuesday.
The day, first officially observed in 2021, is meant to honour the children who died while attending residential schools and the survivors, families and communities still affected by the legacy of that system.
It’s also known as Orange Shirt Day, in honour of Phyllis Webstad, whose orange shirt — given to her by her grandmother — was taken away from her on her first day of school at a B.C. residential school in 1973.
The day was marked as a statutory holiday for the first time in Manitoba last year.
Linda Constant, who’s been a Cree immersion teacher at the school for 17 years, says she’s had the privilege of watching her students become Cree-speaking adults.
While not every student in the program will go on to become a fluent speaker, Constant says introducing Cree values embedded in the language can set them up for success down the road.
“They’re learning. They’re not fluent, but they’re learning,” she said.
“I always tell my kids … when you get older and if you can speak Cree and English, people are going to want you to work for them, because they like to have Cree-speaking people with two languages.”
Constant says the homework that she gives her students includes English translations in smaller letters, so that parents can learn alongside their children.
She wants people to know that Cree speakers are working hard to preserve the language.
“We need to be out there and make people aware that we haven’t lost our language,” she said. “We are going to rebuild our language, and we are going to become strong again.”
