All across nêhiyaw-askiy, people are reeling at the loss of Chief Barry L. Ahenakew on Monday June 16, 2025. He was with us to launch this network in 2010, and it’s been our privilege to share some of his work here. It remains our honour to preserve it.
To honour him on his journey to join the ancestors, I’m sharing some biographical comments he provided for a 2023 video-mapping/place names project, organized by First Nations University Professor Andrew Miller. They show us the uncommon path Barry followed to become a knowledge keeper, and the youngest ever Band-custom Chief of Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation. If you’re able to take the time to explore the videos and transcripts of the mapping project, you’ll come to understand (as I have) the immensity of his knowledge of Cree history from time immemorial, and be grateful (as I am) for his willingness to share it. His passing leaves us deeply bereft.
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 [mapping project] 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.
To his daughter Sekwun and the whole family, we send our thanks for sharing him so generously with the Cree community all across nêhiyaw-askiy. We have all been blessed to share the gifts he offered so freely.
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