Here’s a beautiful new resource offering survival phrases voiced by Christi Belcourt, and Elder Judy Hilbert of Lac Ste Anne (LSA) Métis Community. Christi is an active language learner; Judy is a fully fluent speaker of Métis Cree as spoken at LSA. It builds upon Christi’s earlier work with Belinda Daniels and Randy Morin in the book titled Let’s Speak Cree (for a while) : mahti aciyaw nêhiyawêtân, published in 2023 by Gabriel Dumont Institute, and even includes a downloadable PDF of that book that you can print for yourself so you can listen and read along.
As is typical of Christi’s productions, this one has a beauty of its own: the presentation is clean and clear, the commentary insightful, and the audio quality is simply gorgeous. Christi uses this opportunity to shine a spotlight on this particular dialect of Cree, while simultaneously urging learners to embrace Cree in all its varieties, and even encourages them learn even the simplest expressions in their many forms. This work is clearly a labour of love that I’m looking forward to examining further.
You can find the audio files and downloadable PDF at Christi’s website – and she was even kind enough to send a PDF for us to include here.
http://christibelcourt.com/cree-language-survival-phrases-resource
