Just before Christmas, I had the opportunity to check out Lutsel K’e, otherwise known as Snowdrift. This community of about 300 people is located on the East Arm of Great Slave Lake and is only accessible by plane year-round; in the summertime it can be reached by boat, and by snow machine in the winter.
The South Slave Divisional Education Council worked with elders from Lutsel K’e to put together a Chipewyan dictionary in their dialect, a tool to help keep the language alive inside and outside the school. When the SSDEC chartered out for the launch, they invited me to fill an empty seat.
It’s a night I won’t forget. A majority of residents came out to the Lutsel K’e Dene School that night to receive a dictionary and to watch their youth perform a Christmas concert, complete with Chipewyan carols. Some, especially elders, looked over the dictionary with tears in their eyes; after growing up in a system that tried to suppress the “Indian inside,” here they were finally encouraged to embrace their traditions and language.
