One winter, when I was on the cusp of entry into teenager-hood, I became transfixed by languages. Not by a language, which would have meant having to do something as boring as learn one, but by the idea of there being other languages to learn, and that these languages were not just word-swapped copies of each other, like a blueprint for a building that could be built with brick or stone, but in fact different at their core.
For hours, I would dig through the shelves at the public library on the corner, pulling out books on Hungarian or Chinese or Gaelic, skimming them until I had a sense, not of a language’s vocabulary, but of its structure. How did all these tongues work? How were they constructed? It seemed wondrous to me, that there were so many colourful ways to coax meaning from words.
It was while I was lost in those shelves one afternoon that my fingers found the edge of a small, cream-coloured booklet. Curious, I tugged it out, and gazed for awhile at its simple title: A Cree Grammar.
The book had been written, as most of the early European descriptions of Indigenous languages were, by a missionary. The quality of their work was haphazard; some were awful students of language, while others had very strong foundations. (Even today, one of the most impactful field linguists is an ex-missionary who has since disavowed the religious component, and if you really want to delve into the nerd weeds on this topic, his demonstration of how to learn a language from Indigenous speakers, without any initial words in common, is fascinating viewing.)
Yet the problem with these missionary-made grammars was not so much their quality, but that their quality, or lack thereof, could not be separated from their purpose. The missionaries learned the languages not for love, and certainly not to consider that the scattering of tongues might be humanity’s gift and not our curse. For them, learning and documenting the languages was just a tool, a stepping stone to assimilation; they did it only to better spread their version of Jesus. (They were never subtle about their genocidal intent, either. One of the earliest Cree grammars declared its goal as being “to leave an evidence for future times, when the people to whom it relates shall, in the progress of civilization, have been swept away, that (their) mental powers were of a higher order than had hitherto been supposed.”)
In time, the religious orders those language-learning missionaries belonged to would debase the same Indigenous tongues they’d once documented, and then aggressively seek to erase them. They would beat the words from the mouths of children, severing entire generations’ ability to receive the teachings of their grandparents, the stories of their ancestors, and the full cultural wealth of their Nations.
So while I did not, at that time, have the knowledge to know it as such, the moment I stumbled across that old booklet of Cree grammar was another shameful juncture in a long and still-unfolding tragedy. It was shameful that my first meaningful exposure to an Indigenous language came from a relic of the colonizing forces which had silenced those tongues. And it was a tragedy that, though I’d lived my whole life surrounded by a large urban Indigenous population, the trauma of Winnipeg’s past, and the de facto segregation of its present, meant I’d never actually heard Cree spoken.
Still, that little grammar booklet did one good thing, which is that it made me want to learn more. Two years later, I began taking Cree classes through what is now known as Indigenous Languages of Manitoba, carpooling with a husband-and-wife team of University of Manitoba linguistics professors whom my father had connected with in order to encourage my interest.
The classes were loose, and friendly. Once a week, about ten students — mostly Cree folks reconnecting with their stolen tongue, plus us three môniyâwak — would meet in a Main Street office and fumble through our lesson, while our teacher, a warm and jovial woman whose name, to my sorrow, I no longer remember, chuckled at our many mistakes. But she did it so lovingly, we couldn’t help but burst into laughter with her. (Laughter, as renowned Anishinaabe scholar Pat Ningewance once showed me, is key to learning language, and especially important for Indigenous folks, given the trauma inscribed in the fracturing of generational transmission.)
The fact that we had so much fun was good, because I never got too far with speaking. One common misconception is that some languages are inherently difficult to learn, while others are easy. In truth, it’s entirely relative, a matter of what language you’re coming from, and how similar it is to the new target tongue. To English speakers (I say this from experience) learning Japanese is a mountain to climb, requiring you to contort your mind into new ways of thinking; but for speakers of Korean, which may or may not have a common ancestor with Japanese but either way shares many deep structural similarities, it’s much easier.
And the tongues of the Algonquian language family to which Anishinaabemowin and Cree both belong are, linguistically speaking, about as different from English as any languages can be. They are beautiful tongues: vivid, expressive, and holding in their very bones immense cultural information. But how to construct meaning, or even the foundational concept of what a word is, or a sentence: all of this requires the speaker to think in a whole different way than we do in English. Despite a year of Cree classes, I never had any functional use of it. In the end, I took away just a few words — âstam, “come here,” awas, “go away,” wâpos, “rabbit” — and a tenuous grasp of its grammar.
Still, that teen experience would open my eyes to how precious Indigenous languages are, first and foremost to their Nations, and also to the truth of how colonialism — a system to which I was a beneficiary, regardless of my personal actions — had tried to destroy them. Above all, it instilled me with the conviction, still with me now, that we should be disgusted that the only languages which completely belong to our home — the ones whose words named these plants, these animals, and these forests long before Europeans ever saw them — should be so absent from our wider public consciousness.
Well, I have a platform now, and a responsibility to correct that error. As a journalist, I’ve written about Indigenous languages often: my first long feature for the Free Press was on one of the last native speakers of Michif, a unique Metis tongue. When I speak to journalism students, one of the ideas I try to impart is that journalists should, with great care, try to bring the language into our reporting as much as possible. Partly, it just makes the prose sing. More importantly, it’s a statement of who a story belongs to, and an invitation: it gently invites a reader to step into another perspective.
My 2019 long feature on the impact of Manitoba Hydro development on the Fox Lake Cree, for instance, would have been far poorer without the gift of the Cree words, and distinct philosophical concepts, of mino-pimatisiwin and askiy. You can translate those terms roughly into English — “the good life” and “the earth,” respectively — but the translations are insufficient. Better to help the reader learn these words, so that they may speak their full meaning.
One last little thing: many years ago, as a student at Red River College, I did my big documentary class project on one of Manitoba’s first Cree immersion programs, in Opaskweyak Cree Nation. I’d forgotten my old YouTube account, but managed to track it down for this newsletter. It’s the first time I’ve seen the video in years, and though the filmmaking itself is obviously amateur, I’m still quite proud of it.
Anyway, I muse on all this for a reason, which is that I’m inspired by news from home.
Last week, Winnipeg city council unanimously approved a motion to change the name of Bishop Grandin Boulevard, bestowing it instead with the Anishinaabemowin name Abinojii Mikanah, or “children’s road.” Similarly, Bishop Grandin Trail now becomes Awasisak Mēskanow, the Cree version of the same phrase.
It was encouraging that, at least to my view from halfway across the world, opposition to the change was muted, both in the public and in council. I saw two main scattered complaints, neither of which, in my view, holds much weight. The first was that the Indigenous names were “difficult to pronounce,” which is a weak argument, as it’s a simple matter of exposure. It’s true that Cree and Anishinaabemowin have different sound systems from English, and an unfamiliar tongue will trip in the learning. But everyone who grew up on the prairies can pronounce “Saskatchewan” just fine, and “Winnipeg,” and “Saskatoon.” Soon, it’ll be the same with Awasisak Mēskanow too; the fact that our colonial experience means most of us have had little practice with Anishinaabemowin or Cree words is no reason to stop us from trying.
The second objection I saw, a predictable one, is that to change the name of the street is to “erase history.” I feel the same way about that argument as I do when it’s applied to statues, except it seems even weaker when applied to something without a material presence in our built environment. The “history” argument might have merit if one could say, with a straight face, that most Winnipeggers even knew who Bishop Vital-Justin Grandin was before this debate, and that a street name taught them.
We didn’t; we all know we didn’t. As a kid growing up in Fort Richmond, the name of the boulevard we drove almost every day was meaningless to me: just bishopgrandin, a jumble of sounds. It was not until my teens, when I started seeking out the history of the land and its people, that I learned Bishop Grandin was an actual person, and that he’d been one of the leading architects of the residential school system.
Which is to say: place names are not how we hold or teach history, and so changing a name cannot erase it. Naming is a far more assertive act than simple preservation. To name something is to claim it: a child, a city, a nation. We gave you this name; the name you bear is our story. Furthermore, to name something after a person is only ever done in celebration. We don’t name things after people to remember that figure, but rather to assert who we consider worthy of being remembered with honour.
This is why place names are such an emotional topic all over the world, changing as a given society and people grapples with its past and present and future. It’s why, in the midst of a war, Kyiv residents recently voted to change several place names that speak to its Soviet history and past relationship with Russia, a long entanglement that grows more painful by the week. Bye-bye, Leo Tolstoy, and hello, Ukrainian Heroes Square.
I hope Winnipeggers greet the new street names with the same unified spirit. When I someday come home, I’ll be glad to drive down Abinojii Mikanah, to feel its name on my tongue. Along with that gladness, a growing hope: that many more will follow. We should raise more Indigenous words to our streets, and all our natural and built world. It’s certainly happening more than when I was a teen, but there’s yet a long way to go.
Because I have another dream, that dovetails with the matter of names: over the long term, it’s my hope that someday, all Manitoba schools will have Indigenous language instruction. It’s not feasible just yet: there’s a severe lack of trained language teachers. It’s difficult even for First Nations and Metis communities to find enough teachers to mend the broken language transmission chains for their children. Those communities must of course take priority for whatever human and financial resources are available.
But with investment — and not just of cash, though certainly that, but also of the less quantifiable but nonetheless powerful currency of public care — we could respond to the injustice of residential schools, by building their opposite. We could ensure all of Manitoba’s kids get a basic introduction to the beauty of Indigenous languages. That familiarity would allow them to know, not just as trivia but through a more ingrained and thus emotionally resonant knowledge, that Winnipeg means “muddy water” and Manitoba means “the narrows of the Great Spirit.” Or, that Abinojii Mikanah means “children’s road.”
If that is ever to be a goal, we must start laying the groundwork for it now. Manitoba is blessed with many strong Indigenous language speakers, but time is of the essence. If you chart the ages of fluent speakers in First Nations, there is usually a shockingly sharp drop: a common story is that most adults above roughly age 65 can speak their language very well, but the majority of those younger than that cannot.
So the time to invest in a new deal for Indigenous languages in Manitoba is now. It can’t wait, nor should it. It’s a matter of justice and healing above all, and also about imagining a new future. Over time, a full restoration of Indigenous languages to their rightful places of prominence — street names, education, even simple action verbs — could do something very special. It could allow us to finally know and celebrate what is most precious about our home, the most irreplaceable, the most unique.
This is what I mean: these words, these sounds, they belong to the lands on which we live, and no others. They were born on that territory, and shaped by its nature. There is nowhere else that can claim them, nowhere else that can raise them, nowhere else where one can hear their rhythms. These languages are not “ours,” to the majority of Manitobans who are not Indigenous, but they will always be the ones that best hold and embrace the essence of the place that we all now call home.
Winnipeg has been poorer for not seeing that sooner. Maybe that’s finally changing.
A Quick Note of Gratitude
I was in a park in central Lviv, waiting for my friend to get off work, when I learned I am once again a National Newspaper Award finalist. So are four of my colleagues at the Free Press: Eva Wasney, Julia-Simone Rutgers, Mike Deal and Katrina Clarke. I could not be prouder of those brilliant friends, and of our little paper on the prairie.
Look, I know it’s uncool to openly care about awards, but getting back in the NNA books after a rough 2021 work year and my gnawing malaise about my place in this profession felt good. Really good. I sat on a curb and wept tears of pure joy.
As I’ve said before, being a writer is a strange profession. Even after all these years, it’s still surreal to me that I write something and people read it, which in turn gives me the space to keep writing and to have these special moments. I remain in awe of how lucky I’ve been to write for you, to have your care, and to make words a living.
Thank you so much.
What I’ve Been Reading
+ The New York Times did a bang-up piece on the grifters, scammers and generally weird foreign characters that have flocked to Ukraine. This piece is just the tip of the iceberg; you could write several entire books on this topic. (Look, even I can't claim to be entirely normal, but at least I’ve never pretended to be an ex-U.S. military special forces, which is more than I can say for a number of other foreigners here.)
+ Ricochet’s Zachary Kamel has been doing excellent work documenting the illegal Air B’n’B suites and serious safety issues at an old Montreal building that went up in flames, claiming as many as seven lives. There’s still a lot that’s not known about the blaze, but getting these facts on record points to a wider ongoing issue. Montreal is already cracking down on illegal Air B’n’Bs in the wake of the fire; this is exactly the type of story that highlights the importance of driven local journalism.
+ “The value of engaging with a story, whether it’s a film or novel or satirical article, should be in recognizing oneself within it or, alternately, experiencing the lives of others even when they don’t match our own.” I loved this Andrew Unger essay in the Globe and Mail, on modern Mennonite discourse in a time of Women Talking.
Unger is the witty mind behind The Unger Review — a satire blog formerly known as The Daily Bonnet — which is hilarious, although, as Unger notes in the Globe essay, not all Mennonites agree. I’m not Mennonite (though I did have a junior high teacher who insisted my last name should be spelled “Martens”), so maybe it’s not my place to say this, but it’s unfortunate that the people who criticize Unger’s satire can’t see it for what it is: a love letter.
What I’ve Been Watching
Trauma Zone, British filmmaker Adam Curtis’s seven-part documentary series on the last gasp, collapse and aftermath of the Soviet Union, is a masterpiece. Compiled only of archival BBC footage and presented without narration, it’s less a history lesson, and more an immersive meditation on what it actually felt like to live through that era. It’s all here: all the hardships ordinary people faced, all of their joys and hopelessness and tensions. How they navigated the swirling absurdities of a failing system, and watched powerlessly as the vultures of capital flocked to devour what was left of its corpse.
All seven episodes are available here on YouTube. You may want to set aside some time: I binged the whole six-hour series in just two nights.
One Photo, One Story
“Can I take a photo of your shoe?”
Ihor grinned. “Of course,” he said.
I’d met Ihor in the throng of young people that cluster every Friday night in front of Bar Vernisazh, a dive bar in the heart of Kyiv’s trendy Podil district. It’s a sticky sort of place, gleefully cheap, selling dried fish from the bar-top and pints of cider for as little as 60 hryvnia, or about $2.25 CAD. It has a sloppy squat toilet in the bathroom, and beside the bar there’s a sign that reads, in English: “We don’t have Wi-Fi. Talk to each other, pretend it’s 1995.”
What makes that sign so amusing is that most Vernisazh regulars don't know from experience what that means. Most of them weren’t born until the 21st Century; the first time I went, my companion called it a “teenager bar.” On a subsequent visit, I found myself on the receiving end of a tipsy marriage proposal from a 20-year-old (“Will… you… marry… my friend… he need… Canadian visa”) and a number of eager questions from bright-eyed kids excited to practice their English.
On the night we met, in that churn of shouting voices and laughter, Ihor cut a calmer presence. He’s studying linguistics and speaks impeccable English, and he’d turned 21 just a few days before. He’s not originally from Kyiv; his hometown, Kramatorsk, is in the Donbas region which forms the industrial spine of Ukraine. It is very close now to the worst of the fighting, just 60 km down the highway from the hell otherwise known as Bakhmut, which for many months has borne near the full brunt of the war’s fury.
When the full-scale invasion started, Ihor thought about joining the army, he told me. But his father had other ideas. It should be the older generation that fights, his father thought, and so the father is serving, and the son is studying.
It’s the youth here that get me, perhaps because I’m now at an age where I can look on them with equal parts maternal care and worry. The Russian invasion has stolen many things from Ukraine, and especially from its younger generations, for whom two years of COVID-19 was violently replaced by what’s now a year and counting of war.
It’s always a confusing time to be young, and indeed that’s part of youth’s purpose and its beauty; there’s something sacred about that time we get, to make the mistakes that will make us who we are. Now, far too many of Ukraine’s youth lie buried in the soil of a country which they barely had a chance to enjoy as adults. And the war has scattered their families and devastated the nation’s economy; like many here, Ihor does not have a job. “So what do I have?” he asked, and ruefully answered his own question: a beer, a cigarette, and that night out in Kyiv.
We’d been sitting on a brick windowsill for awhile, talking about Canadian cell phone plan prices (ludicrous) and Ukrainian rock music (amazing), when I noticed what he’d written in Sharpie marker on his yellow Chuck Taylor sneakers.
Putin khuylo. “Putin is a dickhead.” It’s quite a popular phrase in Ukraine.
I laughed and asked if I could take a picture.
The other night, someone on Instagram asked me about the “vibe” in Kyiv. It’s tricky to describe something as ephemeral as a “vibe,” especially when you need to balance both the vibrancy of the capital and the oceans of trauma and grief that wash over its streets. When I tell you that the vibe in Kyiv feels surprisingly normal and even lively, maybe it sounds as if Ukraine isn’t really hurting. If I tell you how deeply it’s hurting, then I’ve failed to show the truth of how it’s most wonderfully alive.
I’ve explored that duality quite a lot in my writing already, but it bothers me that I haven’t yet found the words to convey all the nuances quite right. I’m still learning.
But I’ll say this about the “vibe.” That night, it was summarized for me in the scrawl on a yellow sneaker, worn by a young man whose life, wherever it goes from here, will be indelibly shaped by the cruelest machinations of history, but also by the unifying spirit of his people. And by a cigarette, a happy night under a gentle spring sky, and a cheap plastic pint cup of beer.