Students make Cree Christmas cards for young offenders
Cards made by Grade 10 Saskatoon students will go to Kilburn Hall.
One of the cards says Merry Christmas in Cree. Another has a buffalo symbol in bright colours. Inside there are legends and stories. These are the creations of several students in the grade 10 Cree language class at Mount Royal Collegiate.
The cards will be sent to young people in Saskatoon at Kilburn Hall.
"It made me think about the high incarceration rates, rates of people in jail that are First Nations and Aboriginal peoples."
Daniels and her class came up with an idea they could share with young people in detention, not just the cards, but the 'origin' stories written inside.
Brandon Bedard is one of Daniels' students. He made a card that contains the legend of the buffalo hump inside. He doesn't know if he will hear back from the people who receive the cards. But he said he hopes so.
"It is actually part of our culture to tell stories in the wintertime."
Belinda Daniels says the project also had an impact on her students by bringing them closer together with each other and their culture. One of her students made the bright red card with Merry Christmas written in Cree.
"You can tell she took pride in it, and was careful and methodical when writing it out." Daniels said the story told the creation of the Cree syllabic language.
"When students hear that they have their own language system they're mesmerized."
One of the cards included this legend
Along time ago when the world was still young, the buffalo had no hump. The buffalo got his hump from being unkind. The buffalo used to race across the prairies for fun and the fox would run in front of the buffalo to tell everybody their chief is coming. One day, the buffalo was running towards a bird's nest on the ground and even though he heard the birds cry, he did not stop. Wasakechak did not like this, so he caught up to the buffalo and stopped him. He said you heard the birds and did not stop. The buffalo said, "I don't care. I'm the top animal here. Why should I?" Wasakechak grabbed his stick and hit the buffalo on the shoulders and said, "Now from this day on you shall have a hump." Wasakechak moved on to the foxes, and told him that he had to live in the cold ground for his unkindness to the birds. And that is how the buffalo got its hump and why the fox lives in the ground.