Photo: (left to right) \u2013 Robert Merasty, Vince Natamogan, David McIntyre and Abel Charles \/\u00a0Photo by: Danielle Dufour<\/p>\n
By: Danielle Dufour<\/p>\n
The Pikiskwewin (in Cree meaning language, word, expression) conference hosted by the First Nations University of Canada brought together a host of radio broadcasters and others to talk about Indigenous language revitalization.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m standing in the shoulders of giants,\u201d said Vince Natamogan a Michif speaking radio broadcaster from Pinehouse Lake First Nations.<\/p>\n
Natamogan grew up in a trapline and recalls listening to the voices at 6 o\u2019clock.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething comes on, a beaver or a plane, and it was our voices,\u201d said Natamogan. \u201cWhere did that come from? That\u2019s an alien out of that little radio.\u201d<\/p>\n
The voice he heard was one of those giants, Robert Merasty, a Cree and Michif speaking Indigenous broadcaster from Ile-a-la-Crosse who co-founded the Missinippi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC).<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a broadcaster,\u201d said Merasty. \u201cThat was not my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Merasty grew up learning Cree and Michif as a child.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad told me Robert, you\u2019re not going to be a traveler or a Bishop, you are going to go to school,\u201d said Merasty.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Merasty ended up in Indian residential schools for 13 years and witnessed extreme racism and violence.<\/p>\n
In 1972, Merasty was offered an opportunity to work with Northern News reaching audiences travelling and on the traplines.<\/p>\n
Merasty has dedicated his life to language preservation and works at preserving Indigenous languages through radio.<\/p>\n
Abel Charles is a Woodland Cree radio broadcaster with MBC from Lac La Ronge Indian Band.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all gravitating back to the land, that land-based education where our language is,\u201d said Charles. \u201cI know that\u2019s where our healing is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cree was the only language he heard out on the trapline during the first 10 years of his life.<\/p>\n
Charles recalls the only English exposure he had growing up was through a transistor radio that he and his family would listen to.<\/p>\n
After entering residential school and seeing people on television telling their stories, Charles was inspired to tell stories too. His grandfather encouraged him to get into radio.<\/p>\n
David McIntyre is a Dene radio broadcaster with MBC from the English River First Nation in Patuanak.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first stint with radio was way back when I was young,\u201d said McIntyre.<\/p>\n
McIntyre grew up speaking Dene with his family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was an early riser, and my late mother would always ask me to make a fire, and I was adding chip wood, we had that Sony Transistor radio, and my late mom would always say to put it on,\u201d said McIntyre. \u201cThat\u2019s where I first heard radio.\u201d<\/p>\n
These panel experts identified challenges with translating English to Indigenous languages.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll news sites in Canada use the metric system,\u201d said Natamogan. \u201cWhile we speak in Cree, Imperial, I have to do a real-time conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Natamogan also noted the challenges in talking about medical terminology like vaccines, diseases and viruses.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to walk around the meaning itself, because the English language is so precise, and Cree language is pre-industrial,\u201d said Natamogan. \u201cImagine the challenges you have to bring pre-industrial language into your translations of English term and phrases \u2026 and making sense of the world (to the listener).\u201d<\/p>\n
Charles noted the difficulty to translate technological terms, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
Even though the challenges exist, the ability to provide information to Elders in their languages is important.<\/p>\n
Natamogan recalled an Elder saying to him, \u201cI can see the world through your eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
These broadcasters are hopeful that a new generation of language keepers will join the ranks of broadcasters to preserve these Indigenous languages and pass them on to the next generation.<\/p>\n