Regina man Solomon Ratt was recognized by the Governor General and inducted into the Order of Canada this week for his creation of the first bachelor’s degree in Cree language studies.
Ratt said he started teaching in 1984 and created the course with his own materials, creating his own videos and publications for his students.
“There was nothing available for me to work with,” he said. “I had to create new materials. There was hardly anyone around to teach the language at that time.”
The course was created at the First Nations University of Canada.
Ratt said it’s “wonderful” that the Cree language is being recognized nationally.
“My greatest accomplishment in the last 40 years has been to bring back our traditional stories amongst our people and tell those stories in the language,” Ratt said.
“These are stories that we need to bring our culture back.”
Ratt’s former student Jesse Archibald-Barber said he was an “incredible professor and always very helpful.”
Archibald-Barber said the degree program enables students to “see that they too can continue to study and have success in the Cree language.”
“He has inspired a lot of students, including myself.”
Ratt said he loves telling stories but storytelling on TV or in books is generally in English.
“I would love to read a murder mystery in Cree but we are not there yet,” Ratt said. “We are slowly building up a library of Cree materials very slowly but there are very few people out there who actually read and write the language.”
He said he would love to see an Indigenous language recognized as an official language of Canada one day.