KAHKIIHTWAAM EE-PEE-KIIWEEHTATAAHK

THAT MEANS “BRINGING IT BACK HOME AGAIN” IN MICHIF, THE LANGUAGE OF MÉTIS. THE STORY OF HOW A CRITICALLY ENDANGERED INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE CAN BE SAVED.

- BETTY ANN ADAM

Surveying the deserted Batoche National Historic Site in May before the season opening, one can imagine the Métis people in the spring of 1884 preparing their fields and garden plots by the same windswept prairie and glittering South Saskatchewan River.

By that time, the descendants of voyageurs and bison hunters in the Catholic parish of St. Laurent, where the community of Batoche was located, now about 90 kilometres north of Saskatoon, had seen their way of life altered dramatically with the near annihilation of the bison and the decline of the fur trade. Many Métis, traditionally bison hunters, had previously lived a freedom-loving, travelling life throughout the northwest, wintering in the Prairies and returning in the spring to communities around the forks of the Assiniboine and Red rivers in what is now Manitoba.

Amid the freedom of the Prairies, the people created a new language, one that mixed Cree and French in a way that, as a linguist described it 100 years later, was unique. But in the late 19th century, few outsiders even knew the unwritten Michif language existed.

In the Red River area, the Métis’s struggle with the Hudson’s Bay Company and the government over land rights had culminated with the Red River Resistance of 1869-70, an armed political resistance led by Louis Riel. The Métis ultimately lost that fight, and the people of the new nation, as they declared themselves, were forced to disperse. Many went west to the Saskatchewan River area of the newly created North-West Territories. Over time, Métis in the north and elsewhere in the Red River area came up with other blendings of Cree and French, all of which they referred to as Michif.