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The Cree Language Is Our Identity: The LA Ronge Lectures of Sarah Whitecalf/Kinehiyawiwininaw Nehiyawewin (Publications of the Algonquian Text Society)

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Christopher Wolfart and Freda Ahenakew are both linguists (Ahenakew is Cree) with a long-running commitment to recording Cree elders and making what they record available in Cree (both in syllabics and romanized) and in English, as in their earlier (1987, 1992) books based on stories and life histories of Cree elders. Sarah Whitecalf (1919-1991) was a monolingual Plains Cree speaker. As a child, she had been kept from boarding schools. She recalled that she "never set foot in a school, and because of that I am truly a Cree" (p. 27). The book contains her answers to questions in Ahenakew's class at Le Ronge, Saskatchewan on Cree language structures. The questions appear only in "abbreviated and heavily edited form" (p. xi), which precludes analyzing the interactions. The focus is on what Whitecalf said. Besides the three representations of what she said, there is an extensive Cree-English glossary and English index to the glossary which together occupy half the book. (Beyond a 4-and-1/6th-page introduction there are no notes from the editors about Cree language or culture, as there were in previous volumes.)

As the editors stress, "The La Ronge Lectures of Sarah Whitecalf differ radically from most other text collections in the indigenous languages of North America [including their own earlier Cree materials]: while she illustrates her discussion with personal experiences, Sarah Whitecalf's purpose in these lectures is not to tell stories but to explicate Cree practices and beliefs" (p. ix). Those involved understood what she was doing as a traditional form of elders counseling younger Cree how to live the Cree way (the Plains Cree verb for "lecturing"). Whitecalf's learning was not entirely by observation, although some was (e.g., in discussing dying porcupine quills, she stated, "I learned much from my mother by watching her" on p. 33), but she was committed to sharing her knowledge to aid in preserving Cree language and culture now through schools (and in bilinguals) and to having written down (and translated) what used to be transmitted orally. She welcomed respectful interest from Whites about everything except Sundance Lodges (pp. 53-5). Like Making It Their Own (Lisa Valentine 1995) further east, this book shows First Nations elders embracing new communication technology (including publication) to sustain and reproduce identity rooted in language, while encouraging bilingualism.