The federal government is giving the Gabriel Dumont Institute close to $60,000 to translate a series of children’s books into the Métis language Michif.
The announcement was made Monday at Westmount Community School in Saskatoon by local Conservative MP Kelly Block.
GDI Executive Director Geordy McCaffrey says educational tools that teach children about the Michif language are essential to the language’s preservation.
“Language is critically important to anyone’s culture and heritage,” he says. “So now we have the ability to have some tools that we can use in the schools to teach young people how to read and to do so with cultural artifacts they know about and cultural resources that they’re comfortable with.”
A total of 27,000 books will be translated and distributed to libraries, homes and schools across Saskatchewan.