On the Path of The Elders
By Stanley L. Louttit, Cle-alls (John Kelly), Elaine Keillor, and Jason Woodman Simmonds
The Mushkegowuk Cree of Northern Ontario, through a partnership with Carleton University, BlackCherry Digital Media Inc. andPinegrove Productions, launched the On the Path of The Elders website at Carleton University’s Art Gallery on March 24, 2010. On the Path of the Elders offers an interactive Aboriginal history of the Mushkegowuk and the Anishnaabe peoples under Treaty No. Nine, also known as The James Bay Treaty.
The full contents of the website are available to the public. The “About Us” page welcomes visitors with the words: “Our hope is that this site enriches your life and you come to appreciate, more deeply, the history and culture of our people”. The homepage of the website features links to a photo gallery with pictures from around 1905, the time of the signing of Treaty Nine. An important part of the website is the essay, "An Anishinaabe and Mushkegowuk view and understanding of the treaty.” For Teachers, the site provides guides covering grades 4-10.
On the website are fifty-nine oral stories in four different dialects of Cree, (Swampy Cree, Swampy Cree with N dialect, Moose Cree, and Kashechewan Cree) collected by the linguist, C. Doug Ellis. He recorded these stories and anecdotes from western James Bay Cree Elders during the decade, 1955 to 1965. Each story has a title in Cree, English, and French along with an identification of the speaker, the Cree dialect used, an age appropriate level, a short description in English and French, as well as search tags. Thus visitors have the opportunity to hear Mushkegowuk and learn about life-styles of the past and present.
Perhaps the most important part of the website is the Elder component. As part of the documenting and preserving of Elder history, cultural traditions, and language, the creators of the website have provided Elder interviews and teaching about hunting, trapping and fishing. Visitors to the Elder gallery have a rare opportunity to view the Elder videos and hear the Mushkegowuk language as spoken by the Elders of James Bay. The information and knowledge in these links is available through the website’s interactive teaching game in which players go on a quest to discover their place in a virtual, videogame community.
The design of these games aims to impart, in an innovative way, the background for the negotiations of Treaty No. Nine signed by these Peoples with the Canadian government. Each game aims to present one facet of the elements necessary to have a healthy First Peoples' community today, blending together knowledge that can be pulled from Aboriginal traditions along with aspects of the larger society.
The six elements are as follows and the corresponding Role-Playing Game is given in brackets:
- Education [Canoeing Game]
- Economy [Resource Game]
- Security [Hunting Game]
- Health [Healing Game]
- Culture [Trapping Game]
- Self-government [Negotiating Game]
The game designers and collaborators have based each level on research of First Peoples’ suicide rates among youths aged 15 to 24. In recent years, suicides in some communities have been as high 600 times above the Canadian norm, which ranks these rates among the highest on the planet. The research has indicated that self-esteem and healthy communities can reduce that suicide rate to zero.
Players must successfully play in any order and complete the first five games listed, in order to proceed to the sixth one, the Negotiating Game. All six Path of the Elders’ game-levels teach youths to esteem themselves and deeply understand First Peoples’ cultures and beliefs. The first level’s quest begins in a Mushkegowuck camp and the players must interact with different community members in order to decide which of the tasks they will complete first. Each task imparts traditional knowledge such as the plants used for medicine in this region. In the Healing Game the player learns that some of the larger society’s health practices can be helpful. For the economy the player learns how one must care for resources in order to benefit the community. Each task is important to the well-being of both the individual and the community.
Through completing all six paths, the embedded information helps the player develop a greater awareness of Mushkegowuk and Anishinaabe values. The game’s quest introduces youth to positive outcomes for their lives as First Peoples’ community members and Canadian citizens. This is an all-win proposition.
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