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tansi cuzzins!
Welcome to week twenty-eight of our journey into studying the Y dialect of the Cree language together!
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You can find past lessons on the website here.
Each week, readers follow along with me as I
learn more about my language using a sacred type of alphabet called Spirit Markers (some folks call them syllabics). The Spirit Marker chart we're using is called a Star Chart, and it is below. It's oriented opposite of how "western" maps are – North goes on the bottom for us, and South is at the top.
This week we're continuing the northwestern limb on the Star Chart, the one on the bottom, righthand side.
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The Spirit Marker we are learning about this week is ᒍ, which is pronounced 'tsoo' or 'choo.' The ts sound together doesn't exist in English, so there's no equivalent letter of the alphabet that would help you understand the sound.
But for the purposes of Standard Roman Orthography (which is a fancy term for the English alphabet), we use the letter 'c.'
Therefore, as you can see below, the Spirit Marker ᒍ is written "co" in English.
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Like all of the vowels on this limb of the Star Chart, the default vowel sound is 'oo' like in the English word, "chew."
When the Spirit Marker has a dot on top of it, as it does below, the vowel sound is shortened to "oh".
The Spirit Marker below is pronounced "tsoh" or "cho," depending on dialect, location of the community and placement in the word.
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Our word of the week is ᒍᐍᐦᐃᑲᓈᐱᓰᐢ (cowêhikanâpisîs) and it means Dragonfly.
The thing with Cree words is they can seem overwhelming when you look at them as a novice – that's a lot of letters! Let's break it down a little. Below, I've shown the word
in Spirit Markers and SRO with the pronunciation of each Spirit Marker underneath.
ᒍ ᐍᐦ ᐃ ᑲ ᓈ ᐱ ᓰᐢ
co wêh i ka nâ pi sîs
tsoo-weh-ee-ga-nah-pee-siss
Unfortunately, my favourite Cree dictionary Itwewina doesn't have a recording of this word on the site. And although I've written out the pronunciation of each Spirit Marker, I don't really know which ones are emphasized or which ones are left out altogether by fluent speakers. So, we'll just have to make do with trying to figure it out ourselves.
Or, if you're lucky enough to have a Cree speaker in your family or community, you could ask them to teach you and report back to me!
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I've learned from my Elders that all of life is connected and that many plants, animals and insects on this Earth are not just physical entities – they are Spirits. What we believed before European contact was that insects or animal might be small, but they were connected to a larger existence as a
Spirit in the Spirit World.
I don't have any teachings specifically regarding dragonflies from my Cree elders, but I do have a beautiful story from my mother-in-law, who hails from Japan. She married an American Marine and moved to California as a young woman.
A friend of her husband's shared with her a story of his time in Vietnam. He was walking through the jungle when he came to an open field. He knew that the field was littered with mines and there was no way he would be able to navigate it on his own.
Then, a dragonfly appeared in the air before him. He followed it. It zigged and zagged and he did too, until he reached the other side of that minefield. That dragonfly led him.
He believed that dragonfly saved his life that day. I believe it too. My mother-in-law shared this story with me when she gifted me a dragonfly necklace, and that story has stayed with me.
We are all connected to all of life on Earth – we've just forgotten this. Europeans believed that "man" had dominion over nature, but I suspect they didn't always feel that way. Perhaps they colonized themselves before coming to our lands and doing the same thing here, shedding the knowledge that had been harboured for thousands of years in pursuit of money and power.
However, nature will always prevail. This is why I lay down tobacco, to honour nature and the intricate web of life that we are a part of.
hiy hiy!
Aunty Eden
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Eden Fineday is a nehiyaw iskwew and the publisher of IndigiNews. She is a also a mom, writer and student of nehiyawewin. She lives with gratitude as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), səl̓ ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Peoples.
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