Cree Literacy Network

• Work on this project is still in progress as of November 2023. Material shared at this time is subject to editorial recall and revision, with additional materials is planned for later publication.

Elder Ahenakew’s stories were given to him by his grandparents, parents, uncles, and the old people of his nêhiyawak (Plains Cree) community.  These stories come from the heart of an Indigenous nation with a firm understanding of its place relative to important events, spirit and thought.  This is a rare and precious gift for current and future generations of Cree people seeking to understand their cultural inheritance, language, and relationship to lands which sustained generations of their people.  While we could justly mourn that there are not more story carriers like Elder Ahenakew to share their inherited histories, we should take the time to learn and appreciate what is here in these two hours and 75 locations presented in these maps and recordings.

History happens in places.  Without knowing where history occurred, events become disembodied abstractions.  In physical places, historic narratives become real, and the past intersects with the present.  We cannot stand beside people who played their part in history, but when we can locate the place and orient to the four directions we come closer to seeing what ancestors saw, felt and experienced.  The stories offered here by Elder Barry Ahenakew of Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation are nothing short of a Plains Cree geography of North America – how the country came to be known and how that knowledge has been passed by word of mouth through generations to the present day.  The stories stretch from the stars to the country where humans go when they die.

The keys to these stories are often the names for places or the names of ancestors who’s deeds or experiences are linked to the location. kâ-wâkiciwahk kisiskâciwan “The Big Curve of the Saskatchewan River” – for example, is the place where Ahtahkakoop and his people hunted the last buffalo they ever saw some time in the 1880’s.  Through naming, the story and the moment in history comes home to a definite place that will be remembered by all who read of it and look at where it occurred.  These stories integrate moments of the definite past as well as creation events of the long ago mythical past.  Appearing are genealogies, names and events connecting into the 18th century as well as the acts of mythic ancestors whose deeds precede any meaningful date.  Wisahkecahk, niyânîmis – the Dancer, the mostos-awâsis – the Buffalo Child.  Intertribal relations, treaties and conflicts between are also recorded with the actions of the Blackfoot, Shoshone, Gros Ventres.

Elder Ahenakew provided guidance for the telling of many stories that are winter stories of Wisahkecahk, Our Older Brother, the hero-ancestor and trickster.  “Some people feel these stories should not be told when the snow is not on the ground.  I don’t bother with that.  Most people don’t remember our stories and that is what is important.  When you gave me tobacco, I prayed that these stories would be remembered in a good way. That to me is an important thing.  Most people don’t even remember that He was not the oldest one, that there were others who came before Wisahkecahk.”

Despite more than 150 years of changes imposed on the landscapes of Saskatchewan by settler farms, cities and towns, roads, and hydro-lines, the land is waiting quietly with Indigenous stories that span hundreds of years.  The span of time covered in Elder Ahenakew’s stories makes this seem a very brief. They are not colonizers’ stories, although the newcomers do appear periodically, like at mânotênâhk “Among the visitors” where the Hudson’s Bay Company built a fort at the mouth of the Churchill River on Hudson’s Bay in the late 1600’s.  Indeed, these stories present a shifting multigenerational migration of the Cree people from the eastern seaboard all the way to the Rocky Mountains.

We are honoured to share these stories with you and are deeply grateful to Barry and his daughter Sekwan Ahenakew, for sharing them with us.

Elder Barry Ahenakew is widely known and respected as a storyteller, a knowledge keeper and a ceremony leader of the nêhiyawêwin, or Plains Cree. His traditional Cree name, askihtakwasiniy “greenish blueish stone; blue-green stone” has deep significance: it refers metaphorically to the “Thunder Pipe” or “Thunderbird Pipe”, which, in ceremony, is second only to the black pipe, which is the leader of everything. He is also known for his service as Chief of Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation, from 1983-1990, and from 1992-2005.

Born at Ahtahkakoop in 1953, Barry was one of two sons of Della Ahenakew (aged 89 as of this writing). She gave him, along with his brother, to be raised by his grandparents, owawêsîhowâsis “Dressed-Up Child” and ispahcâwiskwêw “Rise in the Ground Woman.” Keeping him away from Residential School (which all their other children attended), his grandparents raised him instead in the rich traditions of Ahtahkakoop’s people – and of the nêhiyawak of central Saskatchewan.

Taking him along wherever they went, Barry says his grandfather would tell him: “ôta: api. nitôhta.” – Sit here and listen. With Plains Cree as his only language, he was able to understand, absorb, and retain everything discussed by his grandfather in the presence of friends and brothers. As Barry sat and listened, he learned the sacred stories, the locations, the names of important people and places. History that his family and community had been handing down orally for generations.

In the video presentations from which our map is drawn, Barry shares Cree names of places and people that figured in the history of the nêhiyawak, all learned from his grandparents and other knowledge holders. Among the knowledge keepers of a prior generation who were his teachers, Barry names kâ-yâsitêhâkêkocin “Where Eagles Fly in a Cross” kâ-yâsitaskamikwêw “Voice Coming Down from the Heavens to the Earth”, okimâwikwanêw “Chief Feather”, kâ-apisciwêsit “Little Thunder”, opapêcîw “Slowpoke” and kîsikâw-awâsis “Day Child.”

Today, the reserves of the Plains Cree are located in provinces we know as Saskatchewan and Alberta, but Barry’s stories stretch geographically from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains. They include oral histories of  Cree peoples’ travels and engagements with the people, environments, and spirits of North America over hundreds and even thousands of years reaching back to time immemorial.

[Comments transcribed verbatim from Barry Ahenakew’s comments in Video 2, 1:08:39-]

“You don’t talk about these things unless you’re actually doing these things. That’s a rule of the old people, that’s a law. You can’t – not even come here and talk about this  – unless you’ve done it. I do Thunderbird Dance since I was nineteen years old. I’ve done Thunderbird Dances, I’ve done Ghost Dances, I’ve done Horse Dances, I’ve done Bear Lodges. I can talk about them, that’s a law.”

“I’m hosting this to you, so that is okay. You talk about making a book, I’m hosting it to you. So I’m there. Standing with you. Because I’ve done them, actually done these dances. Today you get these people now they’re just jumping in there and sitting there and doing these lodges. Somehow, someway they’ll pay for it from the spirit world. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be, they got to earn that right to be able to run a lodge for somebody over here. And the way to earn it is to have done it themselves, so that’s two laws I’m talking about. Those are laws of the old people, the spirit world, that they’ve learned through the years on passing it on down. So that’s why I say it’s okay what I’m doing here is because I’ve earned it. I’m standing with you guys, whatever you’re going to do with this info down the road, how you end up progressing with it.”

We are grateful to Barry Ahenakew for all he has trusted us to share. We hope this web presentation does him honour, and that those who access it here will do so in a good way.

As of 9 November 2023, on the first layer of this map is complete.

Google My Maps are designed to be intuitive for users, but these notes may help nevertheless.

• The URL for this map is:
  https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Ds2vsKPt2xtmp_GUvrr36IIC3JuJPNJL&usp=sharing
• For the best view, click on “enlarge this map” at the top right corner. 
  
  •  The map browser tab will show a red push-pin like this one. 
  •  The current browser tab (Cree Literacy Network) shows its own icon, like this one.  
  • Go back and forth between the map and this page by clicking on the browser tabs:
• There are three Map Layers: one for each of the three video recording sessions.
• Map Layers are distinguished by Map Points of different colours.  
  
  • Layer One Map Points are red and correspond to Video One.
  • Layer Two Map Points are blue and corresponds to Video Two.
  • Layer Three Map Points are green and corresponds to Video Three.
  • Map Points on each layer are numbered consecutively; corresponding Map Point numbers appear in the transcripts. 
• Choose which layer(s) to view by clicking the red check box(es) on the Map Legend.
• Use the Map Legend to change your view of the map.
  • Open the Map Legend by clicking on the “Map Legend” label. 
  • Close the Map Legend by clicking on the 3 vertical white dots, and click “collapse map legend”
• Click on individual Map Points to view details of that specific location, including a Time Stamp.
  • The Time Stamp corresponds to the video Time Stamp where the point is discussed.
  • With the video open, use YouTube’s time slider to quickly move to the given Time Stamp.

As of 9 November 2023, only the first layer of the map is complete. Layers 2 and 3 to follow as soon as possible.

In the map’s black title line:

• Use the icon at the far left to toggle the Map Legend on and off.
• Use the icon at the far right to open the map in a larger view, in a new browser tab.

To Follow

To Follow

It’s a privilege to take part in a project with so many willing contributors. In addition to the principal participants, Elder Barry Ahenakew and Professor Andrew M Miller, we gratefully acknowledge:

• Eric Anaquod and Anaquod Studios who made and processed the video recordings made onsite at First Nations University of Canada.
• Shayla Sayer-Brabant and Morgan Esperance for mapping, editing map content, technical assistance during the recordings and for preparation of the video transcripts. 
• Arden Ogg, Director of the Cree Literacy Network, with assistance from various other members of the network, began by reviewing and editing the Cree language content collected in the videos, providing transcription in standard Cree spelling (SRO), then later took on the role of managing editor, assembling project components into the present blog post, now hosted here, on the Cree Literacy Network. 
• Sheldon Krasowski of Saskatchewan’s Office of the Treaty Commissioner agreed to jointly host this collection of data for archival purposes, and arranged a subsequent video interview with Barry Ahenakew (not yet processed) to gather biographical detail. 
• Funding and other material support for this project was provided by:
  • Indigenous Services Canada
  • Social Science and Humanities Research Council – Insight Development Grant
  • Office of the Treaty Commissioner
  • First Nations University of Canada
  • Cree Literacy Network