Cree ( / k r iː / KREE ; also known as Cree– Montagnais – Naskapi ) is a dialect continuum of Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 86,475 indigenous people across Canada in 2021, from the Northwest Territories to Alberta to Labrador . If considered one language, it is the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. The only region where Cree has any official status is in the Northwest Territories , alongside eight other aboriginal languages. There, Cree is spoken mainly in Fort Smith and Hay River .
50-679: Lake Athabasca ( / ˌ æ θ ə ˈ b æ s k ə / ATH -ə- BASK -ə ; French: lac Athabasca ; from Woods Cree: ᐊᖬᐸᐢᑳᐤ aðapaskāw , "[where] there are plants one after another") is in the north-west corner of Saskatchewan and the north-east corner of Alberta between 58° and 60° N in Canada. The lake is 26% in Alberta and 74% in Saskatchewan. The lake is fed by the Athabasca River and other rivers, and its water flows northward via
100-428: A consonant , can be written four ways, each direction representing its corresponding vowel . Some dialects of Cree have up to seven vowels, so additional diacritics are placed after the syllabic to represent the corresponding vowels. Finals represent stand-alone consonants. The Cree language also has two semivowels . The semivowels may follow other consonants or be on their own in a word. The following tables show
150-434: A " Provincial Wilderness Park " in 1992. Lake Athabasca contains 23 species of fish, with a world record lake trout of 46.3 kilograms (102 lb) caught from its depths in 1961 by means of a gillnet . Other fish species include walleye , yellow perch , northern pike , goldeye , lake whitefish , cisco , Arctic grayling , burbot , white sucker , and longnose sucker . Cree language Endonyms are: Cree
200-596: A billion litres of slurry poured into the Plante and Apetowun Creeks. The plume of waste products then joined the Athabasca River, travelling downstream for a month before settling in Lake Athabasca near Fort Chipewyan , over 500 kilometres (310 mi) away. The Lake Athabasca Sand Dunes , the largest active sand dunes in the world north of 58°, are adjacent to the southern shore in Saskatchewan. The dunes were designated
250-500: A change of 0.6% from its 2011 population of 847. With a land area of 10.7 km (4.1 sq mi), it had a population density of 79.6/km (206.2/sq mi) in 2016. The hamlet's population is predominantly made up of Cree and Chipewyan ( Dene ) First Nations and Métis people . The hamlet is served by the Fort Chipewyan Airport , opened on June 18, 1966. Air is one of two methods of access to Fort Chipewyan in
300-461: A complex polysynthetic morphosyntax. A common grammatical feature in Cree dialects, in terms of sentence structure, is non-regulated word order. Word order is not governed by a specific set of rules or structure; instead, "subjects and objects are expressed by means of inflection on the verb". Subject, Verb, and Object (SVO) in a sentence can vary in order, for example, SVO, VOS, OVS, and SOV. Obviation
350-802: A full-stop glyph ( ⟨᙮⟩ ) or a double em-width space has been used between words to signal the transition from one sentence to the next. For Plains Cree and Swampy Cree , Standard Roman Orthography (SRO) uses fourteen letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet to denote the dialect's ten consonants ( ⟨p⟩ , ⟨t⟩ , ⟨c⟩ , ⟨k⟩ , ⟨s⟩ , ⟨m⟩ , ⟨n⟩ , ⟨w⟩ , ⟨y⟩ and ⟨h⟩ ) and seven vowels ( ⟨a⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨ā⟩ , ⟨ī⟩ , ⟨ō⟩ and ⟨ē⟩ ). Upper case letters are not used. For more details on
400-484: A library at the fort that was not to be only for the residents of Fort Chipewyan, but for traders and clerks of the whole region tributary to Lake Athabasca. He hoped it would be what he called, in an imaginative and somewhat jocular vein, "the little Athens of the Arctic regions." This library, started in 1790, held more than 2000 books. It became one of the most famous in the whole extent of Rupert's Land . Another fort
450-516: A population density of 80.4/km (208.1/sq mi) in 2021. The population of Fort Chipewyan according to the 2018 municipal census conducted by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo is 918, a decrease from its 2012 municipal census population count of 1,008. As a designated place in the 2016 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Fort Chipewyan had a population of 852 living in 295 of its 372 total private dwellings,
500-593: A work. The vowel ē /eː/ , used in southern Plains Cree, is always long and the grapheme ⟨e⟩ is never used. In northern Plains Cree the sound has merged with ī , and thus ⟨ē⟩ is not used at all. The use of unmarked ⟨o⟩ and marked ⟨ō⟩ for the phonemes /u/ and /oː/ emphasizes the relationship that can exist between these two vowels. There are situations where o can be lengthened to ō , as for example in ᓂᑲᒧ! nikamo! 'sing (now)!' and ᓂᑲᒨᐦᑲᐣ! nikamōhkan! 'sing (later)!'. In alphabetic writing,
550-458: Is also a key aspect of the Cree language(s). In a sense, the obviative can be defined as any third-person ranked lower on a hierarchy of discourse salience than some other (proximate) discourse-participant. "Obviative animate nouns, [in the Plains Cree dialect for instance], are marked by [a suffix] ending –a , and are used to refer to third persons who are more peripheral in the discourse than
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#1732844059816600-550: Is believed to have begun as a dialect of the Proto-Algonquian language spoken between 2,500 and 3,000 years ago in the original Algonquian homeland , an undetermined area thought to be near the Great Lakes. The speakers of the proto-Cree language are thought to have moved north, and diverged rather quickly into two different groups on each side of James Bay . The eastern group then began to diverge into separate dialects, whereas
650-556: Is deeper), and the eighth largest in Canada. Water flows northward from the lake via the Slave River and Mackenzie River systems, eventually reaching the Arctic Ocean . Fort Chipewyan , one of the oldest European settlements in Alberta, is on the western shore of the lake, where the Rivière des Rochers drains the lake and flows toward Slave River , beginning its northward journey along
700-499: Is not phonologically transparent, which means gender must be learned along with the noun. As is common in polysynthetic languages, a Cree word can be very long, and express something that takes a series of words in English. For example: kiskinohamātowikamikw know. CAUS . APPL . RECP .place kiskinohamātowikamikw know.CAUS.APPL.RECP.place 'school' ( lit. 'knowing-it-together-by-example place') This means that changing
750-633: Is one of the oldest European settlements in the Province of Alberta . It was established as a trading post of the North West Company in 1788. The fort was named after the Chipewyan people living in the area. One of the founders of the fort, Roderick Mackenzie of Terrebonne , had a taste for literature. Later he opened correspondence with traders all over the north and west, asking for descriptions of scenery, adventure, folklore and history. He also founded
800-530: Is used in Eastern dialects where s and š are distinct phonemes. In other dialects, s is used even when pronounced like [ʃ] . ⟨l⟩ and ⟨r⟩ are used natively in Moose and Attikamek Cree, but in other dialects only for loanwords. The stops, p , t , k , and the affricate, c , can be pronounced either voiced or unvoiced, but the symbols used for writing these sounds all correspond to
850-582: Is used. John John cî Q kî-mîciso-w PST -eat- 3SG Fort Chipewyan Fort Chipewyan / ˈ tʃ ɪ p ə w aɪ ən , - p w aɪ -, ˈ tʃ ɪ p ə w ən / , commonly referred to as Fort Chip, is a hamlet in northern Alberta , Canada, within the Regional Municipality (RM) of Wood Buffalo . It is located on the western tip of Lake Athabasca , adjacent to Wood Buffalo National Park , approximately 223 kilometres (139 mi) north of Fort McMurray . Fort Chipewyan
900-612: The Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake , Lake Athabasca is a remnant of the vast Glacial Lake McConnell . Tributaries of Lake Athabasca include (going clockwise); Fond du Lac River, Otherside River, Helmer Creek, MacFarlane River, Archibald River, William River, Ennuyeuse Creek, Dumville Creek, Debussac Creek, Jackfish Creek, Claussen Creek, Old Fort River, Crown Creek, Athabasca River, Colin River, Oldman River, Bulyea River, Grease River and Robillard River. Uranium and gold mining along
950-600: The Pembina Institute in 2012. The table below shows the mean daily global insolation (kWh/m ) in Fort Chipewyan for each month of the year using five different fixed solar array orientations and one which tracks the sun. The data was provided by Natural Resources Canada 's Municipality database of photovoltaic potential and insolation which used data collected over 50 years from 144 locations compiled from Environment Canada's CERES CD. The Fort Chipewyan Solar Farm
1000-725: The Slave River to the Mackenzie River system, eventually reaching the Arctic Ocean . The name in the Woods Cree language originally referred only to the Peace–Athabasca Delta formed by the confluence of the Peace and Athabasca rivers at the southwest corner of the lake. Prior to 1789, Sir Alexander Mackenzie explored the lake. In 1791, Philip Turnor , cartographer for the Hudson's Bay Company , wrote in his journal, "low swampy ground on
1050-619: The fur trade posits that the Western Woods Cree and the Plains Cree (and therefore their dialects) did not diverge from other Cree peoples before 1670, when the Cree expanded out of their homeland near James Bay because of access to European firearms. By contrast, James Smith of the Museum of the American Indian stated, in 1987, that the weight of archeological and linguistic evidence puts
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#17328440598161100-469: The proximate third person". For example: Sam Sam wâpam- ew see- 3SG Susan- a Susan- 3OBV Sam wâpam- ew Susan- a Sam see-3SG Susan-3OBV "Sam sees Susan." The suffix -a marks Susan as the obviative, or 'fourth' person, the person furthest away from the discourse. The Cree language has grammatical gender in a system that classifies nouns as animate or inanimate. The distribution of nouns between animate or inanimate
1150-480: The syllabaries of Eastern and Western Cree dialects, respectively: Speakers of various Cree dialects have begun creating dictionaries to serve their communities. Some projects, such as the Cree Language Resource Project, are developing an online bilingual Cree dictionary for the Cree language. Cree syllabics has not commonly or traditionally used the period ( ⟨.⟩ ). Instead, either
1200-488: The y dialect, refer to their language as nēhi y awēwin , whereas Woods Cree speakers say nīhi th awīwin , and Swampy Cree speakers say nēhi n awēwin . Another important phonological variation among the Cree dialects involves the palatalisation of Proto-Algonquian *k : East of the Ontario–Quebec border (except for Atikamekw), Proto-Algonquian *k has changed into /tʃ/ or /ts/ before front vowels. See
1250-458: The Alberta government conducted studies on all-weather road access by extending the existing Highway 63 from Fort McMurray. As of 2008 Highway 63 has been extended from Fort McMurray to Syncrude; there are currently no plans on extending it further to Fort Chipewyan. In December 2005, one-third of Fort Chipewyan's residents signed a petition to request the government to build a 50 km (31 mi) all-weather road to connect with existing roads to
1300-569: The Cree as far west as the Peace River Region of Alberta before European contact. The Cree dialect continuum can be divided by many criteria. Dialects spoken in northern Ontario and the southern James Bay, Lanaudière, and Mauricie regions of Quebec differentiate /ʃ/ (sh as in sh e ) and /s/ , while those to the west have merged the two phonemes as /s/ and in the east the phonemes are merged as either /ʃ/ or /h/ . In several dialects, including northern Plains Cree and Woods Cree,
1350-757: The Plains Cree [j] that is [ð] in Rocky Cree as ⟨ý⟩ . Similarly, in dictionaries focused on Western Swampy Cree, Woods Cree may readily substitute ⟨ē⟩ with ⟨ī⟩ , while materials accommodating Woods Cree will indicate the Western Swampy Cree [n] that is [ð] in Woods Cree as ⟨ń⟩ . Atikamekw uses ⟨c⟩ [ ʃ ], ⟨tc⟩ [ t͡ʃ ], and ⟨i⟩ [ j ] (which also serves as ⟨i⟩ [ i ]). Eastern James Bay Cree prefers to indicate long vowels (other than [eː] ) by doubling
1400-647: The South side with a few willows growing upon it, from which the Lake in general takes its name Athapison in the Southern Cree tongue which signifies open country such as lakes with willows and grass growing about them". Peter Fidler originally recorded the name for the river in 1790 as the Great Arabuska . By 1801, the name had gained a closer spelling to the current name—Athapaskow Lake. By 1820, George Simpson referred to both
1450-504: The dialects which use syllabics as their orthography (including Atikamekw but excluding Kawawachikamach Naskapi), the term Montagnais then applies to those dialects using the Latin script (excluding Atikamekw and including Kawawachikamach Naskapi). The term Naskapi typically refers to Kawawachikamach (y-dialect) and Natuashish (n-dialect). The Cree dialects can be broadly classified into nine groups. Roughly from west to east: This table shows
1500-497: The eastern boundary of Wood Buffalo National Park . The eastern section of the lake narrows to a width of about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) near the community of Fond du Lac on the northern shore then continues to its most easterly point at the mouth of the Fond du Lac River. Fidler Point on the north shore of Lake Athabasca is named for Peter Fidler , a surveyor and map maker for the Hudson's Bay Company . Along with other lakes such as
1550-503: The fur trade. Sir John Franklin set out from Fort Chipewyan on his overland Arctic journey in 1820. In 1887–1888 there was a great famine in the Fort Chipewan area. Electricity and electric lights arrived in Fort Chipewyan in 1959. In 2023 about a thousand people were evacuated from the centre due to threat by a wildfire. [1] Old Fort Point, the site of the first Fort Chipewyan, established southeast of Fort Chipewyan in 1788,
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1600-409: The lake and the river as "Athabasca". The lake covers 7,850 square kilometres (3,030 sq mi), is 283 kilometres (176 mi) long, has a maximum width of 50 kilometres (31 mi), and a maximum depth of 124 metres (407 ft), and holds 204 cubic kilometres (49 cu mi) of water, making it the largest and one of the deepest lakes in both Alberta and Saskatchewan (nearby Tazin Lake
1650-407: The language phonetically. Cree is always written from left to right horizontally. The easternmost dialects are written using the Latin script exclusively. The dialects of Plains Cree, Woods Cree, and western Swampy Cree use Western Cree syllabics and the dialects of eastern Swampy Cree, East Cree, Moose Cree, and Naskapi use Eastern Cree syllabics . In Cree syllabics, each symbol, which represents
1700-453: The long vowels /eː/ and /iː/ have merged into a single vowel, /iː/ . In the Quebec communities of Chisasibi , Whapmagoostui , and Kawawachikamach , the long vowel /eː/ has merged with /aː/ . However, the most transparent phonological variation between different Cree dialects are the reflexes of Proto-Algonquian *l in the modern dialects, as shown below: The Plains Cree, speakers of
1750-470: The northern shore resulted in the birth of Uranium City, Saskatchewan , which was home to mine workers and their families. While the last mine closed in the 1980s, the effects of mining operations had already heavily contaminated the northern shores. The large oil sands mining nearby is suspected to have added to the current pollution levels in the lake. On October 31, 2013, one of Obed Mountain coal mine 's pits failed, and from between 600 million to
1800-512: The northwest that provide access to Fort Smith, Northwest Territories . The major expenditure would be a bridge over the Slave River . In September 2014, the community of Fort Chipewyan in collaboration with Keepers of the Athabasca installed a 1.8 kW solar array on the roof of the Elder Lodge to be used for emergency backup power. An energy baseline study was completed for Fort Chipewyan by
1850-490: The phonetic values of these letters or variant orthographies, see the § Phonology section above. The /ð/ sound of Woods Cree is written ⟨th⟩ , or ⟨ð⟩ in more recent material. Plains and Swampy material written to be cross-dialectical often modify ⟨y⟩ to ⟨ý⟩ and ⟨n⟩ to ⟨ñ⟩ when those are pronounced /ð/ in Swampy. ⟨š⟩
1900-511: The possible consonant phonemes in the Cree language or one of its varieties. In dictionaries focused on Eastern Swampy Cree, Western Swampy Cree may readily substitute ⟨sh⟩ with ⟨s⟩ , while Lowland Moose Cree may readily substitute ⟨ñ⟩ with their ⟨l⟩ . In dictionaries focused on Southern Plains Cree, Northern Plains Cree may readily substitute ⟨ē⟩ with ⟨ī⟩ , while materials accommodating Rocky Cree will indicate
1950-493: The summer. In the summer, the hamlet also can be accessed by boat from Fort McMurray via the Athabasca River . There are no all-weather roads to Fort Chipewyan, but it can be reached via winter roads in the winter. These include roads from Fort Smith to the north and from Fort McMurray to the south. In June 1998, and as part of the Northwestern Canadian Integrated Road Network Plan,
2000-493: The table above for examples in the * kīla column. Very often the Cree dialect continuum is divided into two languages: Cree and Montagnais. Cree includes all dialects which have not undergone the *k > /tʃ/ sound change (BC–QC) while Montagnais encompasses the territory where this sound change has occurred (QC–NL). These labels are very useful from a linguistic perspective but are confusing as East Cree then qualifies as Montagnais. For practical purposes, Cree usually covers
2050-444: The unvoiced pronunciation, e.g. ⟨p⟩ not ⟨b⟩ , ⟨t⟩ not ⟨d⟩ , etc. The phoneme /t͡s/ is represented by ⟨c⟩ , as it is in various other languages . Long vowels are denoted with either a macron , as in ⟨ā⟩ , or a circumflex , as in ⟨â⟩ . Use of either the macron or circumflex is acceptable, but usage should be consistent within
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2100-418: The use of punctuation has been inconsistent. For instance, in the Plains Cree dialect, the interrogative enclitic cî can be included in the sentence to mark a yes–no question such that this is sometimes considered to be sufficient without including a question mark (?). However, in many modern publications and text collections ( cf. The Counselling Speeches of Jim Kâ-Nîpitêhtêw (1998) ) full punctuation
2150-466: The vowel, while the western Cree use either a macron or circumflex diacritic; as [eː] is always long, often it is written as just ⟨e⟩ without doubling or using a diacritic. While Western Cree dialects make use of ⟨o⟩ and either ⟨ō⟩ or ⟨ô⟩ , Eastern Cree dialects instead make use of ⟨u⟩ and either ⟨uu⟩ , ⟨ū⟩ , or ⟨û⟩ . Cree features
2200-501: The western grouping probably broke into distinct dialects much later. After this point it is very difficult to make definite statements about how different groups emerged and moved around, because there are no written works in the languages to compare, and descriptions by Europeans are not systematic; as well, Algonquian people have a tradition of bilingualism and even of outright adopting a new language from neighbours. A traditional view among 20th-century anthropologists and historians of
2250-467: The word order in Cree can place emphasis on different pieces of the sentence. Wolfart and Carroll give the following example by transposing the two Cree words: Cree dialects, except for those spoken in eastern Quebec and Labrador , are traditionally written using Cree syllabics , a variant of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics , but can be written with the Latin script as well. Both writing systems represent
2300-418: Was 39.3 °C (102.7 °F) on 30 June 2021. The coldest temperature ever recorded was −51.1 °C (−60 °F) on 1 February 1917. In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada , Fort Chipewyan had a population of 798 living in 309 of its 387 total private dwellings, a change of -6.3% from its 2016 population of 852. With a land area of 9.93 km (3.83 sq mi), it had
2350-461: Was built in the area, and a third in 1803. From about 1815 to 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) operated a competing Fort Wedderburn (named after Andrew Colvile 's family) on Coal Island 2.4 km ( 1 + 1 ⁄ 2 mi) from the North West Company's fort. This fort was established by John Clarke, and Sir George Simpson stayed here 1820–1821, during which time he reorganized
2400-598: Was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1930. Historic places in the community include the site of the third Fort Chipewyan established in 1803, the Anglican Church built in 1880 and Day School built in 1874, and the Roman Catholic Mission Church built in 1909. Fort Chipewyan has a subarctic climate ( Köppen Dfc ) with long, very cold, dry winters and short, warm, wetter summers. The highest temperature ever recorded in Fort Chipewyan
2450-461: Was developed by Three Nations Energy LP, and constructed in 2019 through 2020. ATCO was the designer and builder, and operates the system. The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation, and Fort Chipewyan Métis Local 125 own the project. The solar farm is expected to supply approximately 25 percent of Fort Chipewyan's energy and annually replace 800,000 litres of diesel fuel. A battery storage system will store 1.5 MWh of power. Phase 1
2500-460: Was planned to include 1,500 panels (400 kW) but was reported at the project completion as a 600 kW facility, while phase 2 was planned include 6,000 panels and was reported at the project completion to include 5,760 panels with the planned output of 2,200 kW. The Government of Canada provided $ 4.5M and the Government of Alberta provided $ 3.3M of the project's $ 7.8M cost. ATCO will buy
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