Corrected: July 11, 2025 – The name of Sept. 30 was incorrect in the original. September 30 is National Day of Truth and Reconciliation (also called Orange Shirt Day). The original article said National Indigenous Peoples Day which is June 21.

Pearl Lorentzen

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

By the end of September, Northland School Division students and staff interested in learning the Woodland Cree dialect spoken in the Wabasca area will have some high-quality videos to help them.

In the videos, Wabasca-area Cree elders will teach the language, tell traditional stories, and pass on traditional knowledge. If all goes well, the hope is to do similar projects for each language of communities served by Northland.

“We’re actually capturing the words from the language holders,” says Pamela McCoy Jones, about the videos.

McCoy Jones is the executive director of the University of Alberta’s Supporting Indigenous Language Revitalization (SILR). SILR has given Northland School Division $40,000 toward the pilot project, to be used to cover the costs of the videographer, editor, etc. McCoy Jones and Dr. Trudy Cardinal are also representing U of A on the team.

The other team members are Virgina Cardinal (Northland resource elder and Northland First Nations, Métis and Inuit Culture and language assistant), Scott Meunier (Northland deputy superintendent), and Debbie Mineault (Northland’s director of the First Nations Métis and Inuit department).

“Our values, our vision really align,” says McCoy Jones.

The pilot is part of Northland’s ongoing language revitalization efforts. The division’s number one education goal is ‘connections supporting truth and reconciliation.’

Each Northland school teaches the Indigenous language of the community the school is in. For the majority of the schools, this is Cree, with one school in a Dene community, and some of the Métis settlements teaching both Cree and Michif.

Across the division, 95 per cent of Northland students are Indigenous, says Northland’s website.

Elders
Northland’s elders advisory council told Northland that there needs to be more home-grown Indigenous language resources, says Meunier.

“There is obviously a gap,” says McCoy Jones, with more resources needed for Indigenous language teachers.

Over the summer, Bigstone elders will be recorded telling the stories. The multi-media company will edit the videos and have at least one 30-minute video ready for National Day of Truth and Reconciliation (Orange Shirt Day) on September 30.

“Storytelling is a very positive strategy for what we’re doing,” says Mineault.

The first videos are “proof of concept,” says Meunier.

“The partnership is really invested in getting that local context,” says Mineault.

The videos will be documentary-style, says Meunier, and will be available for Northland and U of A to use. These can be used by language instructors or other teachers.

The videos are connected with land-based learning.

These will be part of Northland’s goal of weaving Indigenous language, culture, and land-based learning across the curriculum, says Mineault. The theme of each video will come from the elders or knowledge-keepers speaking, but all are “wrapped around land as teacher.”

The Bigstone elders and knowledge-keepers who will be recorded this summer are Virgina Cardinal, John Bigstone (traditional pipe holder), Freddie Gladue (learning traditional songs and drumming as an adult), and two traditional medicine keepers: Vina Young and Rita Willier.

Starting in a good way
The project started with a pipe ceremony on July 9 at the Kapaskwatinak Cultural Education Centre on Bigstone Cree Nation’s Sandy Lake 166 reserve, east of Wabasca. Bigstone Elder John Bigstone led the ceremony. Attendees were Northland administration and representatives from SILR.

“It was a beautiful day,” says Meunier.

Elder Bigstone spoke about reciprocity, says Mineault, how the project should be a true partnership, and the connection between land and language.

Indigenous cultural and land-based knowledge is “rooted in our languages,” says Mineault. She adds that, the partners were encouraged at the ceremony “to really hold on to making those connections with history.”

The project is part of healing, reconciliation, and repatriation of the Cree language, she adds.

Starting in ceremony was a way to commit to building a relationship through the process, says McCoy Jones, in the community where the project will be, on the land, and with some elders who will be part of the project.

Why Wabasca?
SILR has existed for about five years, and has worked with various Indigenous communities, on community-led projects to develop language revitalization resources.

“This one is really about having the connection with the schools,” says McCoy Jones.

Wabasca was chosen for the pilot, because it is the community with the largest number of Northland students, says Meunier.

As of June 2025, Northland had 1,630 students, says enrolment report in the June 28 board package. Of these, 554 attended a Wabasca school. Two other schools Northland also serve Bigstone communities. Calling Lake (117 students) and Chipewyan Lake (22 students).

Wabasca is also the only community which Northland has multiple schools in. Wabasca has three Northland schools: St. Theresa (Kindergarten to Grade 6), Mistassiniy (junior high and high school), and Career Pathways (an outreach school for high school students).

From the end of May to the end of the school year (and possibly continuing into the new year), the Chipewyan Lake School was set up in Wabasca because the students were evacuated because a fire burnt through the community destroying an estimated 49 per cent of the structures, including the water plant.

Students attend Northland’s Wabasca schools from the Hamlets of Wabasca and Sandy Lake, and several Bigstone Cree Nation reserves. Bigstone members have the choice between the Northland schools and the Bigstone Cree Nation Education Authority schools in Wabasca.