One ice cube at a time

Live as if you were to die tomorrow
Learn as if you were to live forever

—Gandhi

Another core aspect of the BQ program that is also highly unusual is how student-centered it is. The program coordinators believe the best language learning for students comes from students. So they encourage us to come up with situations we want to learn the words for. This means we have a pivotal role in our learning, with the onus squarely on us individually, for better and worse (mostly the former so far, I’d say). At first, I was unprepared, having never done it in a school setting. I recently joked that maybe they should have "warned" us, although maybe I wouldn't have come if they had. :)

But it will be a challenge, no doubt about it. Consistency and self-discipline are not what I'd exactly call complimentary concepts in my educational history. I'm not the worst, but I'm far from the best. I tend to cram, so it will take a tectonic-scale shift in my habits to achieve what one friend called the necessary "relentlessness" of language acquisition.

Now, for those who might be curious, here's how my week works:

...............................................

MONDAY

Cree Grammar > 3 hours

Home Visits with language helpers > 3 hours

...............................................

TUESDAY

Cree Immersion > 3 hours

Cree Worldview > 3 hours
(mostly non-language class on Cree belief systems)

...............................................

WEDNESDAY

Cree Immersion > 3 hours

Language Learning Processes > 3 hours

...............................................

THURSDAY

Home Visits > 4 hours

...............................................

FRIDAY

Home Visits > 4 hours

...............................................

SATURDAY

"Advanced Grammar" > 2 hours
(informal study group I take part in)

...............................................

SUNDAY

e-nipâyân (I am sleeping!)

...............................................


It adds up to 23 language hours a week, 12 of them in-class. Does that seem like a lot or a little to you? At first, I only knew about the classroom time; no-one told me about the home visits. In fact, that's one area I wish Blue Quills had told me more about when I was deciding whether to take the program. My impression was that it was just the 12 hours a week, which brought me perilously close to not even coming at all. Luckily, as I wrote last time, my intuition said try it out anyway, and I am very glad I did.

And if you factor in our homework — 60 to 90 minutes a day — well, geez, I actually started to wonder at one point if it was too much. Careful what you wish for, nitotem (my friend). So put it all at somewhere around 30 hours, give or take.

Before I go, another organizing metaphor I came up with to help me understand the needs of second-language acquisition is a glacier. And since, like language, no one can swallow a whole glacier in one gulp, how do you take it all in? You guessed it: one ice cube at a time, baby, one cube at a time. Now, that's truly a mouthful!

And with that, I bid you miyo-tipiskâw.

Rick

An end to whining

Well, in a bid to be more regular (if briefer), I am going to try posting more than once a week. I worry I'll have thoughts and insights slip away if I don't.

So, I think it's high time I finally got over myself. To put an end to my whining about what is an utterly self-imposed 'hardship.' I am here to learn, period, and I intend this blog to be a record of my learning process and progress, not some tear-stained pout-fest. That said, I admit I am a bit of an irrepressible drama queen, so asides regarding my emotional state won't go away entirely. Besides, we've been encouraged by the program to identify any and all barriers to our learning, and language seemingly brings out all sorts of semi-debilitating insecurities in me.

Where these insecurities and emotions are relevant as barriers has to do with my general motivation for being here — to do my bit to help restore what generations of institutionalized anti-Aboriginal practice have severed. Pretty profound stuff. But thanks to a mini-epiphany over the past week, I realized such thinking may be leading me astray.

You see, distilled to its every day essence, second language learning is, in fact, far from profound. Quite the opposite. What I mean is, I now see that learning a new language as an adult requires that you break it down to its smallest bits — one manageable phrase at a time. No one "built Rome in a day," and a language is a metropolis.

I find it helpful to think of it as a puzzle with 10,000 pieces (maybe even 100,000): as each small piece falls into place, you gradually assemble various parts of the picture as a whole. So what if most of it is unintelligible at the start. You just trust that, gradually, some of the pieces will start to agglomerate; pretty soon, bigger chunks form, chunks that connect to other chunks as you find out how they fit together.

But it all starts with those teeny-tiny bits. If you're paying attention, you'll eventually see how some bits follow the same pattern as others. And like the best puzzle people, you learn the virtues of patience.

I'm slowly becoming so virtuous. Some of the mud that's been slung at the wall called my brain these past 15 days has started to stick. The key is consistency, manageability and a tight focus. So, while it's truly awesome to contemplate that these words were, in many cases, the very same sounds uttered by my ancestors hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, I must tell myself none of that is at stake whenever I inevitably flub a language exercise. Talk about pressure! (One day I will be able to! yuk yuk)

So, as I "stumble towards fluency" (coined in a recent conversation with my close friend Robyn), I have to remember that language learning is work both glorious and grunt-like in nature. A task that ultimately lifts spirits only by getting downin the dirt, one 'puzzling' word at a time.

ekosi pitama,
Rick

A second chance

"What you can do
or dream you can do,
begin it!

Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it."

—Goethe

Week 3 of Cree language school begins tomorrow, and I'm thinking about intuition. I realized this weekend that if anything's responsible for finally getting me Alberta-bound, it was something in my gut telling me I *had* to do this. 'Cause to be perfectly honest, the scariest thing about being here was/is having no idea what could come after. Which doors could close because of the dramatic new path I have chosen to take? Which might open?

Hence my appreciation for Goethe's words, because it does feel quite 'bold' of me to so totally uproot myself from all that I knew and had grown accustomed to. It is a leap of faith, especially when I don’t know exactly what I'm putting my faith in. But life is never certain, I tell myself, and we never know what's around that next corner, so you could argue I am living life as it really is. In truth, my life has been too certain and comfortable for long enough. Change is the flow of life, and vice versa. Perhaps there's more than one kind of immersion going on here.

Let me tell you more about my first week. The first few days only served to stoke my keen awareness of how few people I knew here. I was out of it. All I could think of was what I'd left behind. Leaving my friends in Winnipeg felt a bit too much like it could be permanent, even if I couldn't figure out why.

I soon got a chance to tour nearby Saddle Lake, a reserve of about 5,000 people, one of Canada’s biggest, I'm told, both in population and area. You definitely need a car to get around this part of the country, something I don’t have.

As far as my living situation goes, it wasn't long before I could see it'd be great. Without getting into detail (I want to respect people's privacy as much as I can), I am billeting in a house with 3 adult speakers of Cree (one as a mother tongue) plus a youngster. They're all committed to the language. You don’t get much better than that.

When the first week ended, it felt like I'd been here a month. I started to get my bearings bit by bit — geographically, emotionally and linguistically. But learning a new language is extremely unsettling and 'disjointing.' You cannot understand, you cannot make yourself understood. All you feel is futility and humility. (I'm still feeling that, nevermind!)

Then there was the sweat, a ceremony organized by the school as a way to welcome the students and have us meet the elders who'll be helping us learn Cree. For the uninitiated (which frankly makes you only slightly less aware than me), a sweat takes place within a round, canvas-covered enclosure known as a sweatlodge. There, drum songs are played as water poured upon super hot stones generates an all-pervasive steam cloud, enveloping those inside. They say it's meant to be like a womb: dark, hot and cut-off. To say more than that would likely risk my speaking either ignorantly or inappropriately.

It was my first-ever sweat. I've stayed away for personal reasons, ones I don't care to get into right now, but it's mostly out of respect for those who do regularly sweat. I wanted to wait until it felt right for me to be in the circle, and it did.

With the rounds of song over and everyone still inside, we talked about the program and the importance of keeping the language strong. When my turn came up, I broke down as I tried to tell a story about my late maternal grandfather and I, the single most vivid memory I have of him. He spoke next-to-no English, and I recall as a boy of about 11 or so standing in front of him as he sat on our couch in Winnipeg, speaking to me in Cree, smiling warmly, and holding my arm. As my mother translated, he said he could not understand the words I was saying. Without hesitation, I replied, "Well, I wish I spoke Cree too, because then I would talk to you all day." He laughed, and his big smile grew even bigger. I obviously can't fulfill that wish today, but I can do my best to ensure Nehiyawewin will never be a barrier in my family again.

After the sweat, we ate. (I prepared what I called a 'simple' version of thai chicken curry, a description the program coordinator teased me to no end about.) The meal over, we got to talk a little more with our language mentors, three older women and one older man. They're all residents of nearby reserves, and the idea is for us students to visit with them at their homes about 3 times a week.

They're a fun group, who didn't take long to start joking with us and each other. I took an instant shine to them. It's another component of the program that makes it unique. For me, when I think about it, I realize it's a sort of second chance to share in the wisdom, experience and generosity of an older generation, a chance I sincerely hope to take full advantage of this time 'round..

ekosi,
Rick

An urban fact of life

Continuing with my theme of self-location, I told you last entry that I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It's where my mother eventually ended up years after leaving northern Saskatchewan. Apart from a few months in junior high, I spent 99% of my formative years in that city, right up until 22, when I finally left to go to uni in Ottawa. This gave me a very urban Indian upbringing, with all the baggage (and benefits) that carries.

Nowadays, Winnipeg is 'full' of Indians: at a price, some would say, to who we are as Indians, whatever kind we may be (Cree, Dakota, Ojibway, etc.). I suppose I have paid a price, culturally speaking, and it makes me wonder - often defensively - what business I have going around identifying as a Nehiyaw. Usually, though, most if not all of the arguments claiming I'm not draw on fundamentally EuroCanadian ways of thinking. In other words, non-indigenous definitions of indigenous people, and there's no way I'm ever going to identify myself according to that.

But as far as where that locates me, I know that I didn't have the chance to hear the language as often as many of those on-reserve do. My turf was English, and Cree was not a ready option. I don't blame anyone for that; it's just a fact of my life.

And so, as a city-Indian-without-apologies, substantive opportunities to learn and reinforce my language are less than abundant. Take my word for it: for its approach to Cree, Blue Quills College is damn-near unique. A few universities offer the chance to write and read Cree a few hours a week, but that's not what works for me. I crave sound, not script. Yes, text is an invaluable linguistic medium and repository, possessing a magic all its own, but, in the case of Nehiyawewin, I've come to appreciate how it's the speaking and hearing of the language that count most for me. It's what BQ believes too, and that's why I'm here, thousands of kilometres away from my home, a million miles away from all my comfort zones. My textbooks and teachers keep telling me, "This is the hardest thing you'll ever attempt," and boy, I believe it.

Take my first day. It was intense. Even though I am staying with a family of speakers very committed to the language, even though I know I am here for great reasons, personal and otherwise, I couldn't help but feel like I was at the edge of some kind of abyss. Terrified at the overwhelming unfamiliarity of my surroundings, by thoughts of what I was leaving behind (or headed toward) in utter uncertainty, I felt five years old. Seriously.

The only person I knew here - Roberta, the very same friend I mentioned last entry - had just arrived, but with no phone to reach her on. I was the proverbial stranger in a strange land, left all by my lonesome to find my bearings. What had I got myself into?

Someone reading this might want to know *how* I got myself into this? Well, I don't recall exactly when, but at some point this past spring, that old friend of mine Roberta mentioned she was seriously considering moving to AB to take Cree in this really awesome-sounding program. After my own research into it, I realized two things: a) that the program's approach was indeed awesome; and b) newly unemployed, I had this huge open window of opportunity to do anything I wanted with my life anywhere I wanted to do it.

After going back and forth on it, I decided I had nothing to lose except 3 months of my time and $3000 (the first term tuition), plus two rents (a room here and one back home in a shared housing co-op). From cowardly beginnings can come noble deeds, itwew (he said).

Oops: a slight tangent. Next time, I promise more introspection on just who the heck I think I am taking this language of my ancestors.

ekosi,
Rick
near Saddle Lake FN

Locating my tongue

Tan'si nitotemak!

Welcome to MimiCree, an effort to document my language learning journey over the next 10 months.

Ten days ago, I began the Cree Language Certificate Program at Blue Quills First Nations College near St. Paul, AB. Since then, I have been vowing to activate this blog. Well, it seems the best way to begin a journal like this is to locate oneself, on a variety of planes. Today will be part one of that.

My name is Rick Harp, a 37-year-old man whose mother is Cree and whose father is not. While my relationship to the Cree language (aka Nehiyawewin) has obviously spanned my entire life, I would say it's really been the past 13 years that've seen me try to connect to it most seriously.

Way back in 1992, while pursuing a political science degree, I enrolled in an introductory Cree language course offered at Carleton University in Ottawa. I was 24 years old then, and was very excited that a Prairie kid like me (born and bred in Winnipeg, with a mother from Southend, SK, at the foot of Reindeer Lake) was getting the chance to learn his language.

The excitement didn't last, and neither did I. Why not? Well, for one thing, the dialect the instructor taught was James Bay Cree, different from the Cree my mother speaks. (More on why she never taught me later.) Where theirs uses "n" and "l," mine uses "th." (More on that later too.) The course was taught by a linguist who actually lived and taught in JB communities; I think he found it odd to work with people in an urban, classroom environment. He assigned us way too much work, enough to fill my week all on its own. I ended up dropping out to make time for my honour's thesis.

However, frustrating as it was, the Carleton course had one lasting effect: the friends I made -- most notably, Roberta and Tamara, two Crees from Kehewin AB. Talk about your circles coming around.

But we'll get to that another day. My main priority today was to get this bloggy ball a-rolling. Keyapic wipac (more soon)!

ekosi,
Rick
near the Saddle Lake First Nation, AB.