Bible translations into Cree can be subdivided by dialect of the Cree language. The main dialects are Plains Cree language, Woods Cree language, Swampy Cree language, Moose Cree language, Northern East Cree language, Southern East Cree language, Kawawachikamach, Atikamekw language and the Montagnais language (Western Innu and Eastern Innu).
New Testament, 2014.
Bible portions, 1921
New Testament, 2001
Methodist, later Anglican, William Mason and his wife Sophia Thomas Mason's [1] [2] work comprises several editions of the Gospel of St John in the Plains Cree dialect made between 1851 and 1857, the complete New Testament in 1859, and the whole Bible in 1861-62.
Anglican Archdeacon James Hunter's [3] [4] version of three of the Gospels in the same Plains Cree language appeared in 1853-55 (reprinted in 1876-77).
Anglican Bishop John Horden's Four Gospels in Moose Cree was printed in 1859, and his complete New Testament in 1876. [5] [6]
Archdeacon MacKay's 1908 Revision into Western/Plains Cree.
More recently Stan Cuthand translated the New Testament and about half of the Old Testament into Western Cree. [7] Margaret Ducharme, Hazel Wuttunee, and Ethel Ahenakew are also working on this project. Bob Bryce was the team coordinator. It is undergoing final checking before publication.
In the final decades of the 20th century the Canadian Bible Society, working in partnership with the Cree Nation, the Church and other partners – including the Summer Institute of Linguistics – began working on a new Cree Bible. Reverend Stan Cuthand, a Cree elder, Anglican priest and an expert in his language has been the lead translator on the project, working closely with several Cree people and with the support of Canadian Bible Society consultant Ruth Heeg. Progress on this new translation has been slow due in part to the lack of adequate resources to complete the quality assurance process. The Easter story from the Gospel of Luke was published in a Latin alphabet and issued with a CD. The Old Testament Book of Ruth was published in a parallel-script format that presented Cree syllabics and Latin on facing pages. The subsequent Gospel of Mark was also in a parallel script format with a CD. [8]
| Translation | John 3:16 | |
|---|---|---|
| Horden, 1876 (Moose) | ᐌᓴ ᑭᒋᒪᓂᑐ ᐁᔅᐱᒋ ᓵᑭᑖᑦ ᐊᔅᑭᓕᐤ, ᑭ ᒥᓕᐌᐤ ᑳ ᐯᔭᑯᓕᒋ ᐅᑯᓱᓴ, ᒥᓱᐌ ᑕᑐ ᐊᐌᓕᐗ ᑳ ᑖᐺᔦᓕᒫᓕᒋ ᐁᑳ ᑭᒋ ᓂᔑᐗᓈᑎᓯᓕᒋ, ᒫᑲ ᑭᒋ ᐗᔮᓕᒋ ᑳᑭᑫ ᐱᒫᑎᓯᐎᓂᓕᐤ᙮ | |
| Hunter, 1876 (Eastern/Swampy) [9] | Weya Muneto ā ispee̔che saketa̔pun uske, ke̔ mākew oo pāuko‐Koosisana, piko una tapwā̔towayitche numoweya oo ga nissewunatisse̔ty, maka oo ga aya̔ty kakekā pimatissewin. | |
| Mackay 1908 (Western/Plains) |  | |
The Cree are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations.
CreeKREE is a dialect continuum of Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories to Alberta to Labrador. If considered one language, it is the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. The only region where Cree has any official status is in the Northwest Territories, alongside eight other aboriginal languages. There, Cree is spoken mainly in Fort Smith and Hay River.
The Innu / Ilnu or Innut / Innuat / Ilnuatsh ("people"), formerly called Montagnais from the French colonial period, are the Indigenous inhabitants of territory in the northeastern portion of the present-day province of Labrador and some portions of Quebec. They refer to their traditional homeland as Nitassinan or Innu-assi.
Edmund James Peck, known in Inuktitut as Uqammaq, was an Anglican missionary in the Canadian North on the Quebec coast of Hudson Bay and on Baffin Island. He founded the first permanent mission on Baffin Island, Nunavut. He developed Inuktitut syllabics, derived from the Cree syllabary and the first substantial English-Inuktitut dictionary.
Inuktitut syllabics is an abugida-type writing system used in Canada by the Inuktitut-speaking Inuit of the territory of Nunavut and the Nunavik and Nunatsiavut regions of Quebec and Labrador, respectively. In 1976, the Language Commission of the Inuit Cultural Institute made it the co-official script for the Inuit languages, along with the Latin script.
Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of Indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing system previously. They are valued for their distinctiveness from the Latin script and for the ease with which literacy can be achieved; indeed, by the late 19th century the Cree had achieved what may have been one of the highest rates of literacy in the world.
Cree syllabics are the versions of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write Cree dialects, including the original syllabics system created for Cree and Ojibwe. There are two main varieties of syllabics for Cree: Western Cree syllabics and Eastern Cree syllabics. Syllabics were later adapted to several other languages. It is estimated that over 70,000 Algonquian-speaking people use the script, from Saskatchewan in the west to Hudson Bay in the east, the US border to Mackenzie and Kewatin in the north.
Swampy Cree is a variety of the Algonquian language, Cree. It is spoken in a series of Swampy Cree communities in northern Manitoba, central northeast of Saskatchewan along the Saskatchewan River and along the Hudson Bay coast and adjacent inland areas to the south and west, and Ontario along the coast of Hudson Bay and James Bay. Within the group of dialects called "West Cree", it is referred to as an "n-dialect", as the variable phoneme common to all Cree dialects appears as "n" in this dialect.
The Severn Ojibwa or the Oji-Cree language is the indigenous name for a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken in a series of Oji-Cree communities in northern Ontario and at Island Lake, Manitoba, Canada. Ojibwa is a member of the Algonquian language family, itself a member of the Algic language family.
The Swampy Cree people, also known by their autonyms Néhinaw, Maskiki Wi Iniwak, Mushkekowuk,Maškékowak or Maskekon or by exonyms including West Main Cree,Lowland Cree, and Homeguard Cree, are a division of the Cree Nation occupying lands located in northern Manitoba, along the Saskatchewan River in northeastern Saskatchewan, along the shores of Hudson Bay and adjoining interior lands south and west as well as territories along the shores of Hudson and James Bay in Ontario. They are geographically and to some extent culturally split into two main groupings, and therefore speak two dialects of the Swampy Cree language, which is an "n-dialect":
John Horden was the first Anglican Bishop of Moosonee, Canada, who for more than forty years led services in Cree, Inuit and other languages of his parishioners.
St. Thomas' Anglican Church is an historic Carpenter Gothic style Anglican church edifice built by the Hudson's Bay Company in Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada.
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The complete Bible has been translated into three of the dialects of Inupiat language, the New Testament in two more and portions in another.
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Biblical translations into the indigenous languages of North and South America have been produced since the 16th century.
The Athabaskan language family is divided into the Northern Athabaskan, Pacific Coast Athabaskan and Southern Athabaskan groups. The full Bible has been translated into two Athabaskan languages, and the complete New Testament in five more. Another five have portions of the Bible translated into them. There are no Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages with portions of the Bible translated into them.
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