Plains Cree

Plains Cree (native name: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ nēhiyawēwin) is a dialect of the Algonquian language, Cree, which is the most populous Canadian indigenous language. Plains Cree is sometimes considered a dialect of the Cree-Montagnais language, or sometimes a dialect of the Cree language, distinct from the Montagnais language. Plains Cree is one of five main dialects of Cree in this second sense, along with Woods Cree, Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and Atikamekw. Although no single dialect of Cree is favored over another, Plains Cree is the most widely used. Out of the 80 thousand speakers of the Cree language, the Plains Cree dialect is spoken by about 34,000 people primarily in Saskatchewan and Alberta but also in Manitoba and Montana. This number is diminishing as social pressures increase to use English, leaving many Cree children without a fluent command of Cree. Monolingual Plains Cree speakers are still found, however, in the more rural Cree-speaking areas, such as the northern river communities in the Cree territories. These populations, nevertheless, are primarily composed of elders and are continuously shrinking in size.

Cree

The Cree (historical autonym: Nēhiraw; French: cri) are one of the largest groups of First Nations in North America, with over 200,000 members living in Canada. The major proportion of Cree in Canada live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. About 38,000 live in Quebec.

In the United States, this Algonquian-speaking people historically lived from Lake Superior westward. Today, they live mostly in Montana, where they share a reservation with the Ojibwe (Chippewa).

The documented westward migration over time has been strongly associated with their roles as traders and hunters in the North American Fur Trade.

Sub-groups

The Cree are generally divided into eight groups based on dialect and region. These divisions do not necessarily represent ethnic sub-divisions within the larger ethnic group:

Cree (surname)

Cree is a surname which has several separate origins in England, Scotland and Ireland. It occurs in all those countries today and also in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. It is of Medium Frequency in Scotland and Northern Ireland (using the benchmarks of the Guild of One-Name Studies) (Spathaky 1998).

Cree surname research

Prior to 1989 a few people had already researched their individual Cree ancestry in the UK (notably Brigadier Hilary Cree in Devon and members of the Yorkshire and Glasgow Cree lines). Robert H Cree in the USA had spent a lifetime researching five Cree lines emanating from western Pennsylvania in the late 18th Century. Cree surname research started in earnest in the UK in 1989 with the publication by Trevor Cree of a booklet listing all Cree entries from the Indexes to Birth, Marriages and Deaths (1837-1980) for England and Wales (Cree 1988). Entries from the 1988 IGI (International Genealogical Index) were also included. The surname is registered with the Guild of One-Name Studies.

Cree (disambiguation)

Cree is an Native American ethnic group.

Cree may also refer to:

People

Places

Language

Other

See also