My First Blackfoot Word Book
by Jason Eaglespeaker
Description:
Publisher Description (Eaglespeaker Publishing):
A first word-and-picture book that helps kids (and their adults) learn Blackfoot. Over 40 words - and a pronunciation guide - included!
As a young boy growing up on the Kainai (Blood) rez, both of my late grandparents (Leona & Glen Eaglespeaker) spoke Blackfoot to me daily - especially when I was in trouble, lol. We never wrote Blackfoot though, only spoke it - I never even considered writing it down.
In this book you’ll see the words written as I was taught them - written phonetically (how they sound) - with priceless help from Mary Ann Crow Healy. I also included a simple Pronunciation Guide to help out even more.
Author Biography (Eaglespeaker Publishing):
Only a few short years after the Occupation of Alcatraz, the Wounded Knee Incident and the Shootout at Pine Ridge Reservation, a boy was conceived… Born in Seattle, raised on four reservations and in two cities, Jason EagleSpeaker is both Blackfoot and Duwamish – the one his family called “that li’l half-buffalo, half-salmon ndn”. Today, he is an award winning nationally published author, illustrator, social entrepreneur and publisher of other author’s amazing works. Now based in Canada's ocean playground - Nova Scotia - Jason travels extensively throughout North America, creating endless non-fiction works. His hard hitting true stories focus on revealing the modern strengths and struggles of Indigenous people.
Resource type: Picturebook
Age recommendation: K-3, grades 4-6
Keywords: Visual dictionary, Blackfoot, Kainai, land, animals, language preservation
Year of publication: 2020
Publisher information: Eaglespeaker Publishing
Teaching and Learning Ideas
Our team collaborated with new teachers, alumni of the Werklund School of Education’s Bachelor of Education program, to create teaching and learning plans for texts in this website. With audiences ranging from Pre-Kindergarten to Post-Secondary, lesson plans across this resource address a wide range of school subject areas, inclusive approaches, and Indigenous education topics, such as the revitalization of Indigenous languages. As this website was designed with Undergraduate Programs in Education instructors, as well as teachers in mind, connections to UPE courses have been flagged on each lesson plan. These lessons are intended as a starting place for educators, to help you envision ways in which you might bring Indigenous literatures, as well as ways of knowing, being, and doing, into your teaching contexts. Please adapt, use, and share these lessons in ways that are generative for your teaching practice. We offer our sincere thanks to the dozens of new teachers who gifted us with these creative ideas!
My First Blackfoot Word Book Unit Resource Guide, Grade 1 and Special Education
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