 My name is Solomon Ratt and I've been teaching at First Nations University since 1986. I've been teaching Cree Language here in the Y-Dialect. I'm originally a T.H. stylist speaker from Stanley Mission's schedule. I created a Facebook group a few years ago actually called Cree Language Videos and on the video on the site I will post videos of Cree Language Lessons, you know, simple Cree Language Lessons like introductions and things you like to do, you know, hobbies and days of the week, weather terms and other other stuff like that and I've also posted traditional stories on that page of our stories up with Saki Chaka and all that so I've got those posted on there too and we've got 3,000 members on that page and other people have been posting videos here too dealing with language. I was teaching a class online and we needed some videos for the students that are out on the sites and so I created the page for the students to access on their own so they could study the language. Yes, the ideal situation of language is to be able to teach the language, leave the classroom, go out to the community and talk the language. That'd be ideal. That's not the way it is. That's not the way the world is so students need to have extra time where they could access information, access the language so social media has that option to be able to allow students to come in and access the language files, language videos on that site on their own time so they could hear the language spoken, see the language written down and practice the language. A lot of people share their videos and a lot of people also have also said that they really like the videos and to aid with their language development because in the classrooms we'll do some exercise in the classrooms and but the classrooms at most we're only there for an hour and 15 minutes for two days a week. So the students have told me that it's so handy to be able to go into the site and be able to hear the language and review what we've taken in class and they get to know that stuff a lot better and they're able to do it themselves next time when they come to class. So feedback has been very good for this site. I teach a wide dialect in Cree and so the video sites, the sites on Facebook is sometimes I post videos on in the wide dialect and sometimes I post videos in the TH dialect and but I always say which dialect they are, they're going to be in and it's easy to recognize the dialects anyway and but for most part the videos are all in wide dialect because that's what we teach here at the university is wide dialects. Yeah, there is a lateral engineering band who who have been posting videos there in the past within the past few months they've been posting videos and Charlie then who works with a lateral engineering band creates videos and posts them on various Cree sites on social media including Cree language videos, Cree word of the day, Cree language resources those things have all they all contribute to language development. I think the social media will contribute a lot to language development and it can only grow like I'm surprised they've got 3,000 members in the Cree language videos in the Cree language of the day, Cree word of the day phone, day page, I'm just thinking Cree language of the day, Cree word of the day we have over 5,000 members there and so it's been growing and the Cree word of the day was created by a friend of mine in northern Alberta, Wayne Jackson and he was surprised that it grew so fast and it was the first one how social media site that was there and then we created the other ones somebody in Alberta created Cree language resources and there's Cree language resources there and then I followed suit with the Cree language videos but there are other sites on social media that deal with Cree language instruction so it's good to hear it's good to hear their language and it's good to see the language Britain. It's important to me because there's very very few people who speak the language still especially the language generation they don't they don't speak the language most of them don't speak the language and so they have no access to language a lot of times especially the city the city people you know they don't hear the language anywhere in the community unless they go to social gatherings and when there's a few people who doubt to do the language so the only place they'll get access to the language is the social media where there's a spoken video and that's why it's so important to be able to carry on this work so we can hear the language spoken because more and more each day the language is being lost by by lots of people people are not picking it up are not being being taught in the homes and that's a thing they are not being taught in the homes where it should be taught so they have no nothing to go on except for the social media outlets. The videos include stories traditional stories of Cree treacherous we structure this quite a few of those and then we have other videos that deal with activities like hobbies what do you like to do you know we talked about that what do you like to do on Saturday you do okay I like to do this and you do that in Cree we all do that in Cree and also the videos also include language lessons like introductions and social gatherings you know we make up a social gathering an episode of a social gathering thing and various types of verbs operating in various functions like i you he and she you know that stuff and conjugation patterns so those are videos are on those so the color code is also going from tense to tense and so it makes it thing makes it easier so you see the videos you see the written part of the videos when you hear the audio along with it along with the videos and days of the week are covered cover whether terms are covered normal everyday activities they're covered for today tomorrow and the past all that kind of stuff it's good to hear those trillion stories in the original language those are people who are fluent in the language they'll understand the humor in those languages the humor gets lost when it gets translated into English unfortunately you know so it's important to hear that in the original language and the translators of the stories have to figure out how to bring the humor out for the non non Cree speakers and it's hard to do because it's hard to have that kind of stuff but it's so essential to have those traditional stories because the traditional stories hold all our lessons on how to be in this world how to survive in this world how to get along with one another and they also include our responsibilities to one another like parents to child and parents to the grandparents and all that stuff all those lessons are included in the stories like social media will never replace a teacher and never will it will never replace a face-to-face contact you have with students you know the key to traditional education is the face-to-face contact teachers and students have with one another and being involved with each other within the community and as they learned just like my parents did with me when I was growing up learning teaching me all these things and that's the key to traditional indigenous education social media can be can help in that because they could the students can access that students like going on social media a lot of people like so being social media so that's where we tap into that and and contribute to language development that way social media makes it accessible to for review for for review for extra stuff extra activities to be able to listen to it just stuff and social media is wonderful that way that it can never replace the face-to-face that we so need to have the only thing I could say is to just keep at it you're going to be laughed at and unfortunately that is a reality people do get laughed at for mispronouncing words and don't let that laughter get in the way of your learning people will laugh but eventually like people have to understand when people started talking when you and I when I was a baby I did not start talking right away perfectly with perfect pronunciation that's the same thing we have to look at people are learning language of course they're going to mispronounce the words mind you sometimes it's really funny when they're mispronounced the words and end up cursing and then they laugh you know unfortunately I laugh but then I'll tell them why I laughed but then most of the time the students will will say oh yeah okay I'll watch that next time then it's actually next time they don't make that same mistake but they don't give up and that's the thing the laughter will be there but don't let it discourage you you know it's part of learning indigenous education means learning everything about what I can around my surroundings around the world in which I live and I have to learn from my surroundings and live off the land and learning from the land learning from people around me learning from my younger people for the younger people learning from my elders everything everything's in there that's what indigenous education means to me for indigenous education I hope there's going to be a lot of of education done out in the lands you know learning off the land like we've had the past two years we've been going to traditional creased storytelling camps during the midterm break in february where we go into a camp where we stay for the week and we tell stories at night and we participate in in traditional activities during the day and then we do this in Cree those are the kind of things that that need to be done in the schools for the indigenous education and it's happening people are taking their students out on the land and doing activities out there and it's just really wonderful to see to see this something I grew up not knowing that it was in the school system I knew it when I was with my parents during the summer months but I did not participate in any traditional activities when I was in school in the city school in the residential school we didn't do that but nowadays the schools are getting involved in outdoor education of traditional activities which is really good and if they keep that up and bring it in the language along with that and and realize that you cannot separate language from from from culture and there's great hope that we can revive the language and we can revive the traditions I'd like to see more programs I'd like to see more videos online not necessarily just my site but there are other social media sites that deal with language language videos which is really nice to see and one of my former students has contributed to pre-language videos and what he's done is basically he's taken a video that we made of our pre-story telling that's pre-story telling cabin in February and so he closed captioned the telling of the story here I'm telling the story and he's got closed captioning in Cree and he did all this work by himself and that he's a former student of mine and he posted that video on pre-language videos that kind of stuff we need we need to hear and we need to see to be able to help language development and I'm hopeful that other people will be will be well-contributed and more and more people are contributing videos to other sites and it's good to see that the interest is there