[MUSIC] Hello. I would like to speak about, a few things as far as the Nehiyaw culture is concerned, Nehiyaw language. That I was, privy to learning about, in the past few decades. I was thinking about the wonderful work that people do, at the different levels of education. Primarily here and in Regina, Saskatoon, at about how they do research on morphemes, morphology. And, I was very, privileged again, to have come across some words that spoke to me, about worldview, as far as Nehiyaw life is concerned. And one of the things that I came across was, I am going to be using this, and what I'll do is use the spirit markers. We call the spirit markers ahcâhkipehikanak. ahcâhk is a spirit. pehikan, part of that morpheme marker, spirit markers. So that's what we were given here, and it was reintroduced about, 44 years ago, after residential school. One of the things that I came across was a word. [MUSIC] Which means a sacred spirit, kîsik, the sacred spirit. And there are different types of sacred spirits. I was talking to, a knowledgeable person about this, and one of the sacred spirits that's probably we need right now, today, is tânimayikohk ehakimiht anohc, what's the date today? May 9th? [LAUGH] May 9th today, and there's people that are asking for this one sacred spirit to, help out in northern Alberta here, at a place called nistawâyâw what's called Fort McMurray now. That sacred spirit they're asking is, piyesiw. piyesiw is the thunder being. And what is piyesiw? A sacred spirit. So we say, piyesiw is, [MUSIC] okîsikôw, there's kîsik, a sacred spirit, then there's okîsikôw, the sun is a sacred spirit. The wind is a sacred spirit. The Earth, a sacred spirit. So, okîsikôw, and there's many, many, sacred spirits, that were given to us here to utilize. And, when we have an event, [MUSIC] Every few hours there's an event. [difficult to discern]. Over here, sâkâskenohk. sâkâskenohk. We say where the sacred spirit, kîsikâw’pîsim, comes up. It makes a light and then it goes down over here. That light it makes, we call that event, [SOUND] kîsikâw. kîsikâw is what we call that event, and it's a spirit, a spiritual event, because the morpheme kîsik, is in there as well. Sacred spirit, kîsik. And so, [MUSIC] When we have that, the vulgar translation is daytime for kîsikâw. But our interpretation is that, it is an event which is a time for, spirit. So, we're often encouraged to be, enthusiastic about it. What we do is, we observe this life with this apparatus, [MUSIC] One of the seven holes in our head. [MUSIC] We call this, miskîsik. miskîsik. And, it's a tool to help me to observe the spirit. The spiritual event. So that kîsik again is in there. kîsik. okîsikâw. okîsikôw, sorry. okîsikôw. And then there's kîsikâw, the daytime sacred spirit, a specific sacred spirit, okîsikôw. kîsik, a sacred spirit general. miskîsik, there's that kîsik again. What I observe the world with, is in there. So. [MUSIC] There is a general sacred spirit, kîsik, the morpheme. Then there's okîsikôw, that's a specific sacred spirit. [MUSIC] And I'm not too good at English, and translating this kîsikâw, so that's a sacred spirit event. But the, [MUSIC] A sacred spirit happening. And, like I said, the vulgar translation for that is, daytime. miskîsik, that which I observe the earth with, the life, the sky. kîsikâw, that which I observe, all of life with this apparatus. miskîsik so. [speaking in Cree/difficult to discern]. What had we said, there's that miskîsik. Anyways, I forgotten what we said about that one, but maybe some. [MUSIC] So, the translation for that is eyeball. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to take this and put Roman orthography, the translation over here of these ones. There's kîsikâw. [MUSIC] There should be a marker there. And then there's, miskîsik. [MUSIC] So, the common morpheme in there is kîsik, is in all of these. For those of you that don't read spirit markers. So that's our worldview. And in the beginning when I started, I said. I said that, I would like to implore in a sacred manner, and I only mimic what I've heard in ceremony. [MUSIC] And so I ask that divine being, that we understand. We have a name for the divine being. That name for that divine being, we call [MUSIC] âyi. So I began by imploring this being, to help me here, as I am not altogether confident about, where I am, as far as the language and the culture is concerned. So I asked for help, when I would talk about this. This is our name for that divine being. If you go into Nehiyaw ceremony, where they have fluent speakers, fluent and knowledgeable speakers, you'll hear in ceremony, they'll always begin like this. They'll always always go, âyi. Then they'll begin their invocation. They'll begin imploring. [MUSIC]
