Why I stopped learning Cree (Nêhiyawêwin)

01 April 2014 [link youtube]


My battery is my editor: the tape stops when the camera ran out of power (in mid-sentence!).



Although I had more to say (and did, indeed, keep talking after the camera shut down) I decided it wasn't an entirely bad thing to have this information in a nine minute segment. And I can't negotiate with my editor.



The article mentioned in the first twenty seconds is here:

https://medium.com/native-american-eya/9429fc06b9d9


Youtube Automatic Transcription

my article discussing my experience studying
of Canada (F.N.U.), article then you already know my experience is not the answer to the question, "Why did is the diversity and the [extent of the] territory out in California; the Algonquian languages the east coast of Canda, and what's now New could speak the language, the indigenous language an Algonquian language. map, a tremendous diversity of terrain, and was definitely not exclusive to First Nations this transition in my life, and both for me on a bigger scale, the opportunity was very languages of Canada, you've got to do it now, an education project, to stop these languages in 20 years it is going to be too late. elderly, retired people, who can speak the got to do that research now. are elderly people, and the average life-span comfort of Canada's big cities. now who often have had incredibly tough lives, could make contact with people who are fluent the circumstances that many of Canada's First there are exceptions. Canada's First Nations is that life can be person, living in the British Empire. on these political issues that I've just been couldn't deliver on its promises was not enough had been expecting from the first day I set and the Canadian government's threats to shut just around the time I signed up. down from its threats and agreed to continue that month, people had walked out, maybe a point of principle, in the midst of that scandal. which was also the day I got off the airplane was very honest with me and said, "Look, this false hopes or expectations about it". the opportunity was now-or-never. going in those languages, while I was still pretty fluently by the time I got to my early that have very few people who speak them fluently to doing that. student, [but] of course, I already had a classes right away, and I was looking at a PhD programs, coast-to-coast. there were university programs in British and First Nations languages. are good; perhaps each one is a disaster in of options and opportunities to look at. had to end, why I had to give up on all of been created in the first place by my marriage. the job that she had in Canada, the job that geographically) for me to be able to study when she made the decision that she wanted her in that decision, and to work for the of my career, or my own education. was the wrong decision, because, today, I consequences of these decisions, they weren't on my wife, and they were significant contributors... to why we got divorced, were the consequences First Nations studies. inevitable about that. when you think you're in a marriage that's going to last until your old age. terrible, it's easy to tell yourself, "Well, in a much longer story that's going to continue heart to try to create a new career in Canada because of the sudden requirement that I leave [with] a totally new set of linguistic and Uh, y'know, it's easy to convince yourself chapter in a long story that may go on until to supporting my wife, in her decision to moment. education matters more, my career matters and peoples matters more than this marriage, my mind. simply, that I felt grateful that that opportunity channel. career... [end].