Cassandra Spade, a local lawyer and member of Mishkeegogamang First Nation, will be featured in the Grand Council of Treaty #3’s Here’s a Thought virtual speaker series on March 17, detailing her personal journey in learning to speak Anishinaabemowin as a second language and teaching it to others.
“My session will be talking about my language work and my journey towards learning my language and sharing a bit about my experience of what it was like to learn the Anishinaabe language as a second-language learner, because it’s not my mother tongue,” Spade said. “I’m going to share about the current state of our language in the region, what it was like for me learning and when I was able to talk to my grandmother for the very first time.”
Anishinaabemowin is an Algonquian language with many regional dialects and a long cultural history. The session is intended to encourage others to learn such Indigenous languages, promote their use and create lasting space for them.
“There are 75 Indigenous languages in Canada, and every single one of them is at severe risk of becoming extinct, meaning that there will no longer be speakers of those languages,” Spade said. “There’s this movement and realization that Indigenous languages need to be revitalized and protected if we’re going to avoid that future possibility of extinction. In our region, that means we need more people speaking our languages. We need more services offered in our languages, and we need more accessibility.”
This means making the use of Indigenous languages fully integrated into Canadian society, similar to French.
A graduate of the University of Manitoba and the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University, and an associate lawyer at the Fort Frances-based law firm JudsonHowie LLC, Spade practices family law and is an ardent supporter of Indigenous justice.
But she is equally focused on revitalizing Anishinaabemowin, which led her to create an organization called Gaa-minwaajindizowaaj (GAAM) about six years ago. Last year alone, she hosted 50 free language classes with over 300 participants.
Spade said her inspiration stemmed in part from personal struggles with identity, uncertainty in education and feeling lost.
“I was at a crossroads, and I had this very lovely elder take me under her wing. She started teaching me the Anishinaabe language,” Spade said. “She said to me: ‘If you take care of our language, it will take care of you.’ I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but as I’ve come to practice my language and really advocate for its existence and raise awareness about it, it’s given me a lot.”
After putting in the work of taking care of the Anishinaabe language herself, Spade has come to see it take care of her in return. “The more I invest in the Anishinaabe language, the richer I am. It’s true what my elders say: If you take care of our language, either by speaking it, advocating for it, or revitalizing it, it will take care of you.”
Spade even had the opportunity to speak with her great-great-grandmother, a monolingual speaker of Anishinaabemowin.
“She did not speak English throughout her life. The majority of times I got to spend with my grandmother, she would hold my hand, or she would touch my hair. She was very gentle and always very loving. But the very first time I got to talk to her was really special, because I was able to tell my grandma how much I love her and how much she means to me,” Spade said.
“Over the years, I got to really know her and how funny she is, and these are things that I couldn’t talk about before. As I started to grow up, she was able to give me advice on how to take care of a family. She gave lots of advice to me over the years. I was very fortunate to know her in her later years before she passed, because she was a very special person.”
Spade says the ability to speak Anishinaabemowin will help others connect to their cultural history.
“Our language is basically embedded with lots of rich indigenous knowledge that gives us our unique world view and gives us our unique perspectives on life,” Spade said. “When we’re disconnected from language, it can feel like we’re disconnected from our culture—our identity—our Indigenous knowledge. I really want to encourage other people to take up the language, because it will connect you to those things.”
