Tansi: International Gathering breathes new life into Indigenous languages

The theme this year: revitalization and preservation of Indigenous languages.

Sinclair, who is the mosôm, or grandfather, at the Red Deer Native Friendship Society, plays a pivotal role as elder and mentor to many. Formerly, he offered similar mentorship to inmates at Bowden Institution.

But it was 30 years ago that Sinclair’s life really changed for the better.

Now 68, it’s been three decades since he rediscovered his language.

“I grew up with the language. My grandmother and grandfather raised me and I spoke it, but I was shamed by cousins at an early age when I tried to speak it, so I stopped,” he says.

“I moved to B.C. when I was a bit older, and got connected with an elder who started teaching me Cree. I started saying my prayers with the pitiful little amount I knew, but I continued. I would pray whenever I drove to work, in Cree, as best as I could. Now I can do so fluently, and it’s made me feel like an actual Cree person again.”

Closed up, self-conscious and shy as a child, even putting the wrong emphasis on a single word brought the jeers and giggles, he says.

“Then the 60s Scoop came along, and residential schools were going on,” he says of things that didn’t help his hope to ever erase the void in his life that was the loss of his familial language.

“Those took kids out of their Indigenous homes to be raised in white homes or by white people. Even myself not having gone to residential school, but as someone whose grandmother did, I was totally colonized. When I embraced my spirituality at an older age, however, it spoke a different language to me.”

“Kisêwâtisiwin,” says Sinclair, referring to ‘kindness.’

It’s partially how he views the fact that the international gathering has finally been able to happen in Red Deer, with support from the municipality. He believes also that its occurrence alone is a step toward reconciliation, but encourages non-Indigenous folks to attend and listen.

“This event is so awesome. It’s been the prayer of a lot of people over several years. People had a vision for this 10 years ago, but there was no support. We weren’t getting it from anyone. Now we are.”

“Indian people,” he says, “have gone unheard for a long time.

“My grandmother, when she came home from residential school and was raising me — I was eight or nine — would tell me stories about babies being buried. Nobody would hear us or believe us. Now they’re finding them. Imagine that. Those lying Indians were telling the truth. But we’ve always been discarded.”

But Sinclair was determined to not let his language, a victim of the aforementioned events, be discarded, and he passes it on, with other things, still.

“When my grandson was born, I put some sweetgrass, or wihkask, right by his head. It was the very first thing he smelled,” shares Sinclair.

“Newo means four, and we’re made of four parts: mind, spirit, physical and emotional, which alludes to the medicine wheel.”

Sinclair was born in northern Alberta, growing up on the Wolf Lake Métis Colony near Bonnyville.

“The language connects me back to my roots and to my identity as a Cree and Indigenous person. I didn’t feel connected. I felt like a bystander to my own culture,” he says.

“Relearning it brought so much to my life. I do ceremony, sweat and pipe and do work for a lot of people. I’m me now that I’ve reclaimed it, and I did so because it’s mine. Before I was what I thought people wanted me to be. And it’s all part of a way of life, one that’s thousands of years old.”

Mîkwec (thanks) for reading.

More about the International Gathering is here.

by Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

Tansi: International Gathering breathes new life into Indigenous languages

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