Regina Public Library teaching Indigenous words through social media videos

REGINA -

The Regina Public Library (RPL) is teaching Indigenous words to the public through language tutorial videos posted to social media.

Each week throughout the summer, RPL posts a video of someone explaining how to say a word in one of the six languages spoken in Treaty 4: Michif, Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Lakota and Nakoda. 

“It’s to share our language and to share our culture. Language is very much tied to our culture. It holds our stories, our family histories, our protocols, our traditions,” said Wendy Sinclair, RPL’s Indigenous services advisor.

The videos are part of an annual summer contest for youth, called ‘Level Up,’ that encourages young people to read, learn and participate in activities. The ‘Indigenous word of the week’ is one of those activities.

Although the videos were created for youth, Sinclair said people of all ages can learn from them.

“We just basically wanted to share basic words and phrases that anybody could access,” Sinclair said.

Jeannine Whitehouse did the videos for the Michif language. She said her mother only spoke the language sometimes at home, so Whitehouse didn’t grow up fluent in Michif.

“As with a number of people my age, we often didn’t grow up with our language,” said Whitehouse. “There’s this Indigenous renaissance happening, and a lot of people my age are reclaiming our language.”

Whitehouse said she felt it was important for her to do these videos, to not only share the language with others who don’t speak it, but to show that anyone can learn a new language.

“To put myself out there and make an attempt at the language, and to share that and to have other people recognize that, even if you aren’t fluent and you are still trying, the ancestors know what you’re saying,” she said.

For Saulteaux speaker and storyteller Lynn Cote, the videos are also about more than just teaching words, but opening people’s eyes to a number of different ways of life.

“Each group has their own teaching, their own belief system. So it’s important to be able to distinguish from different groups of people,” said Cote. “If you listen to our languages, they’re beautiful. And that’s why I think it’s very important to learn about us, about the First Nations.