Exhibition offers Cree language opportunity

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A close-up look at Cree syllabics

(image courtesy Musée Héritage Museum, St. Albert)

A new exhibition at the Musée Héritage Museum in St. Albert, near Edmonton, showcases the original oral nature of Indigenous languages and the challenges of transitioning them to written form.

The exhibition, First Languages, runs Oct. 31 to Feb. 24, 2024 and features two travelling presentations from the Canadian Language Museum in Toronto.

The display, Beyond Words: Dictionaries and Indigenous Languages, highlights the complex relationship between Indigenous languages and dictionaries over several centuries. From the earliest contact, wordlists, phrasebooks and dictionaries have been more than neutral bridges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous languages. They’ve also been used in colonization.

The display, Cree: The People’s Language, explores Cree, the most widely spoken Canadian Indigenous language. The display includes maps and images exploring the syllabic writing system, word formation, animacy and the future of Cree.

Visitors will enter a tipi and hear recordings of spoken Cree. Throughout the exhibition there is a series of stations with opportunities to listen and to try to translate Indigenous languages and identify and learn the meaning of the Indigenous names of some Alberta places, plants and animals. 

Source: Musée Héritage Museum, St. Albert

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