Cree language gets 21st-century reboot from First Nation Canadians

New crowdsourced book 100 Days of Cree features translations of everything from pizzas and saunas to Johnny Cash songs

With entries ranging from pwâkamo-pahkwêsikan, the Cree word for pizza – “the throw-up bread” in literal English – to môniyâw-matotisân, a sauna or a “white-man sweat”, a crowdsourcing project documenting the vitality and evolution of the most widely spoken indigenous language in Canada is about to be published.

Neal McLeod, a poet and indigenous studies professor at Trent University, set out to connect with other Cree speakers on Facebook, aiming to gather together classical Cree vocabulary and to “coin and develop” words relating to contemporary life. According to a 2006 Canadian census, there are around 117,000 Cree speakers.

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