<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif"><div class="" style="font-size:12px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span class="" style="line-height:1.2;border-right-width:5px;border-right-style:solid;border-color:rgb(89,89,89);display:inline-block;margin:0.2em 10px 0px 0px;padding-right:10px;vertical-align:text-bottom;color:rgb(89,89,89);font-size:2.16667rem;font-weight:bold;text-transform:uppercase;float:left">OPINION</span><h1 class="" style="font-size:2.66667rem;margin:0px 0px 5px;line-height:1.25">
Christi Belcourt: Reclaiming ourselves one name at a time</h1></div><h3 class="" style="font-size:1.16667rem;margin-bottom:5px;margin-top:0px;line-height:1.25;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Can aboriginal identity be reclaimed by changing names?</h3>
<p class="" style="font-size:0.83333rem;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:0px;line-height:1.35em;color:rgb(89,89,89);font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span class="" style="margin-right:1em">By Christi Belcourt, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/cbc-news-online-news-staff-list-1.1294364" style="color:rgb(17,82,120);text-decoration:none">CBC News</a></span> <span class="">Posted: Dec 31, 2013 4:41 PM ET</span></p>
<p style="font-size:14px;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:0px;line-height:18.890625px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><em>Editor's note: Today <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/hobbema-to-change-name-in-new-year-1.2476653" style="color:rgb(17,82,120);text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold">Hobbema will become Maskwacis</a> — Cree for 'Bear Hill'. To mark the occasion, we are publishing an excerpt of an essay that Christi Belcourt wrote earlier in 2013, on reclaiming names. </em></p>
<p style="font-size:14px;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:0px;line-height:18.890625px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,sans-serif">First Nations, Ojibway, Blackfoot, Indian, Aboriginal, Treaty, Halfbreed, Cree and Status Indian are all fairly familiar English words but none of them are the names by which we, the various indigenous peoples, call ourselves in our own languages.</p>
<p style="font-size:14px;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:0px;line-height:18.890625px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,sans-serif">By contrast, how many Canadians have heard these names: Nehiyaw, Nehiyawak, Otipemisiwak and Apeetogosan? Yet, these are who I am because these are the names my grandparents used to describe and call ourselves.  </p>
<p class="" style="font-size:0.83333rem;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:0px;line-height:1.35em;color:rgb(89,89,89);font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span class=""></span></p><p style="font-size:14px;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:0px;line-height:18.890625px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,sans-serif">
Even Métis is not the name people called themselves in the language in Manitou Sakhahigan, the community where my dad was born and raised. And even that place is not known by its original name but by it’s English/French name, Lac Ste. Anne.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:0px;line-height:18.890625px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Access full article below: </p><div><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/christi-belcourt-reclaiming-ourselves-one-name-at-a-time-1.2480127">http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/christi-belcourt-reclaiming-ourselves-one-name-at-a-time-1.2480127</a><br>
</div></div></div>