This presentation aims to inform on local Indigenous efforts to document and reinstate traditional places names in Asiniskaw Ithiniwak (Rocky Cree) communities in Northern Manitoba. The purpose of the Asiniskaw Ithiniwak (Rocky Cree) Place Names Project is to recover, reclaim, revitalize, and validate Rocky Cree knowledge of their places and placenames. The people of the Rocky Cree communities of Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation (NCN, Nelson House) and O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation (OPCN, South Indian Lake) have lived in the region of the Churchill River drainage since time before memory. The Asiniskaw Ithiniwak (Rocky Cree) have maintained their own histories and ways of knowing through traditions of recording and remembering, passed on in oral and written forms, through webs of relationships and culturally mediated protocols.
Based on these relationships, knowledge keepers of Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation have been gathering information on traditional local place names for many years and are now partnering with geographers and historians from the University of Winnipeg to bring this information back to their community and into local classrooms and homes. This presentation will introduce the Asiniskaw Ithiniwak (Rocky Cree) Place Names Project to gather feedback and input Elders, knowledge keepers, educators and others working in this area.
