Cree Literacy Network

Thanks to author and Cree language student Candace Savage for permission to share this version of her opinion piece, published last Saturday (29 August 2026) in The Globe and Mail. I discovered it via writer and Cree language learner Ken Wilson, who described it as “a testament to the importance of learning Indigenous languages and also learning from them,” and as a wîci-môniyâw (fellow non-Indigenous person) who has walked a similar path with Cree language and culture, I found much in it to love. 

Treaty Six was signed 150 years ago. There is still work to be done

Every Sunday morning for the last several years, I have scrambled out of my bed here in misâskwatôhminihk (Saskatoon, Sask., in Treaty Six territory) to join other early risers from across the country in a language-learning circle known as Cree and Tea.

Warmed by the kisêwâtisiwin (roughly, kindness or goodness) of the group’s co-founder, Indigenous language advocate Dr. Charlotte Ross, we sit at home in the glow of our computer screens, but with a sense that we are gathered around the same kotawân (campfire).

I am of Swiss and British ancestry, with no trace of Indigenous blood, yet I always feel welcome in this company. All people come from the same fire, Charlotte reassures us; we are all wâhkôhmâkanak (relatives). If I enrolled in the group hoping to deepen my understanding of what it means, for me, to live on the Canadian Prairies, I have stayed for the generosity and beauty of Cree teachings.

The main purpose of our weekly virtual get-togethers is to soak up Cree grammar and vocabulary, ē-pasikânamahk kâwih nêhiyawêwin êkwa nîhithawîwin (to lift up, or revitalize, the Plains and Woods dialects of the Cree language). In practical terms, what we mostly do is sit together and listen to Charlotte’s co-leader and nimis (older sister), Senapan Thunder, as she shares aspects of nêhiyaw mâmitonêyihciikan(Cree thought) that she has acquired through a life-long apprenticeship to the Old Men and Old Women who were, and are, her teachers.

Keeping the kotawân of Cree language and culture burning with a strong, clear flame is work-atoskêwin (good and purposeful work).

“We have come through a long time of society trying to extinguish our language,” Senapan explained at one of our sessions, her tone matter of fact. “We have come through a long time of society trying to extinguish our stories, our understandings, our prayers.” I am always amazed that she can speak of these struggles with such apparent calmness.

Personally, I haven’t achieved this level of Zen. It twists my heart to know that this harm wouldn’t have happened if “society,” otherwise known as the “Crown,” or the Canadian state, had lived up to the Treaty it struck with the Indigenous peoples of central Saskatchewan and Alberta 150 years ago.

Treaty Six or, as Senapan prefers to call it, wîtaskiyohtawin (Living Together on The Land) was initiated, in ceremony, at Fort Carlton, a Hudson Bay Company trading post a 100 or so kilometers north of misâskwatôhminihk on Aug. 23, 1876 and then again at Fort Pitt, near present-day Lloydminster, a couple of weeks afterwards. The lead negotiators were, on the government side, a Macdonald-era Conservative politician and true-believer in Western development, Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Morris, and on the Indigenous side, the respected Cree Chiefs Ahtahkakoop, Mistawasis and Wîhkasko-kisêyin (Sweet Grass), among others.

For many of the Indigenous leaders in the Saskatchewan River country, this consultation was already years overdue. Although very few môniyâwak (people of European ancestry) had as yet settled in the region, their influence was being felt at a distance through smallpox epidemics and starvation. Year-by-year, the herds of plains bison, ohtâpamihowin (the means of survival), were dwindling, driven toward oblivion by a relentless slaughter. Without them, what would become of the children of this land?

In presenting the provisions of the Treaty, Morris stressed the kindness of the Great Mother in this time of dire uncertainty.

“The instructions of the Queen are to treat the Indians as brothers,” he told the Indigenous leaders, “and so we ought to be. The Great Spirit made this Earth we are on. He planted the trees and made the rivers flow for the good of all his people, white and red; the country is very wide and there is room for all.”

Under the Treaty, Morris asserted, the Indigenous signatories would retain the freedom to maintain their hunting and fishing lifeways, while also establishing themselves as farmers. To ease this transition, the Great Mother promised to provide everything needed for success: a guaranteed land base, or reserve, plus seeds, oxen, cattle, tools and equipment. In addition, every community was promised a schoolhouse, right on the reserve, and a medicine chest, the latter an addition made at the chiefs’ request. The Indigenous leaders also negotiated a promise of relief in times of extreme hunger and distress. No problem, Morris said.

“I know that the sympathy of the Queen, and her assistance, would be given you in any unforeseen circumstances,” he told the assembled chiefs. “You must trust to her generosity.”

The written, English-only text of the Treaty foregrounds the extinguishment of Indigenous title to more than 300,000 square kilometers of Cree and Saulteaux territory, an area about the size of Italy or Poland. But judging from Morris’s account of the discussions, which he published in 1880 as The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, this subject did not come up during more than a week of discussion. The talk was all of bright days and benevolence.

Most reassuring of all, this new era of equality, brotherhood and prosperity was to last forever. “As long as the sun shines and the river runs,” Morris promised.

iskoyikohk pîsim ka-pimohtêt, iskoyikohk sîpiy ka-pimiciwahk…

I was reminded of these phrases on a recent Sunday morning, when Senapan introduced a word that was new to me: sîpihkêyihtamowin. Literally rendered into English, it carries the meaning of “thinking with your heart like a river.”

“That is what they used to tell us, the Old People – sîpihkêyihta,“ Senapan said. Have the strength of mind to endure. Be very patient. “Believe in something that is higher than your physical space.”

I continue to be humbled by the faith-filled, forward-flowing spirit of sîpihkêyihtamowin that has carried, and is carrying, the people of the Treaty Six First Nations through the century and a half of betrayals that have ensued since 1876. The decades of governmental neglect, ineptitude, dispossession and fraud. The multiple failures to deliver on promised benefits and to provide humanitarian aid in times of crisis. The surreal perversities of the Peasant Farming Policy and the Pass System. The cruelties of Residential Schools and the child-welfare regime.

Senapan’s words echo through my thoughts: “We have come through a long time of society trying to extinguish our language, our stories, our prayers.”

There are no immediate cures for this legacy of willful damage but, as I am learning through Cree and Tea, everyone and everything has the power to heal. “A heart is supposed to be happy,” Senapan says. With this encouraging instruction in mind, one task for people like me, the non-Indigenous beneficiaries of Treaty, may be to feel everything we feel about the darkness of the past (shame, grief, sorrow, fear, anger, whatever it may be) and then to set our emotional burden aside. “Heavy feelings are a veil placed over you,” Senapan teaches. “The weight you carry makes everything hazy.”

In this enlightened frame of mind, perhaps we too will have the clarity to think with our hearts like a river, to advance calmly toward the future of mutual miyo-ayâwin (prosperity, health and comfort) that the Indigenous signatories of wîtaskiyohtawin envisaged for us. In doing so, we will recognize ourselves as wâhkôhmâkanak, relatives on this land, all gathered around the same kotawân.