Abstract

Indigenous languages, lands, and cultures are inextricably linked, and language is critical for cultural retention and transmission, individual and community well-being, and identity. While Indigenous languages worldwide risk being lost, language activists are emerging from communities to protect their ancestral languages, heritages, and connections to land. In Canada, approximately 70 Indigenous languages are spoken today; however, the Cree dialect continuum is one of only three expected to endure. The legacy of Canadian residential schools and other colonial practices have had lasting impacts on the relationships to language and land
of many Eeyouch (Eastern Cree people). In response, the Eeyou (Eastern Cree) community of Wemindji launched the Cree Literacy for Wemindji Adults program (CLWA) in 2017. In this manuscript-based master’s thesis, undertaken at the invitation of the community and Community Council, I explore the intimate relationships between iiyiyuuayimuwin (Eastern Cree language) and ischii, and the implications of language reclamation for miyupimaatisiiun (Eeyou community and individual well-being), as shared with me by community members. In the first of two manuscripts, I demonstrate how dispossession caused by colonial encroachment and neocolonial extractivism has caused these relationships to weaken, and explore community responses to these impacts over several generations. In my second manuscript, co-author and Wemindji Language coordinator and Cree language teacher, Theresa Kakabat-Georgekish and I explore the impacts of the process of language reclamation on CLWA participants’ and
community well-being and sense of cultural identity.