A new Métis language educational puppet video series is premiering this weekend in Edmonton. Michif Makers follows the story of two cousins, William and Angelique, who explore the Michif language with help from their animal friends.
The series’ creator and puppeteer, Christopher White, joined CBC Radio’s Edmonton AM with his puppet William to talk about the premiere — and why these language revitalization measures are so important.
The interview has been condensed for clarity.
Edmonton AM: This show and the whole story you wanted to create here, was it always envisioned as a puppet show or how did it come to be?
Christopher: It started off during the pandemic as a hobby of of making puppets. I grew up on things like Ghostbusters and Gremlins and just love practical effects and never got around to making a puppet. But of course, with all the time on my hands, I said, “OK, I’m gonna make a puppet now.” And with my day job working in Indigenous education videos and really seeing this appetite and desire for things around language and revitalization and knowledge for children and having two small ones myself is like, well, how can I do something like this? And then the two ideas just kind of like, lightning bolt kind of coalesced. And then Michif Makers was born.
Edmonton AM8:21Learning a new language through puppets
A new Edmonton-made puppet show for kids is launching tomorrow: Michif Makers makes its debut tomorrow at the Stanley Milner Library at 1 P.M. Christopher White is the creator and puppeteer behind Michif Makers.
How did the kids relate to it?
It’s a lot of fun. I started writing this for my then three year old … Now she’s seven, and by the time I got around to actually writing it, she had gotten into The Simpsons and stuff like that. So I feel like that’s infused a little bit more of the writing and maybe it makes it a little bit more fun for the grownups watching it as well. Each episode, after I’m done editing it, I run it upstairs and I show my daughters and they laugh at the right points. And the great thing is like hearing them pick up the language too, and repeating phrases and stuff like that, which is, you know, mission accomplished.
Tell us a little bit about the character of your puppet.
Christopher: Do you want to say something?
William: I don’t know, I’m a little nervous … Thank you for having me.
Oh, that’s very good! Are you a natural Michif speaker?
William: No, I’m just learning myself. But you know, this has been a great opportunity for me and my [cousin] Angelique to learn a little bit more and make friends and everything like that.
Is Michif hard for you? I mean, being a puppet. I don’t know how tough learning language is when you’re a puppet.
William: I know a little bit of French, and Michif — depending on where you are and what dialect you’re speaking — is usually some kind of combination of French and Cree. So I’m trying to learn Heritage Michif right now. But here in Alberta, a lot of people speak Northern Michif and we try to have that in the show a little bit. One of our characters, Bella, she speaks Northern Michif. But a lot of us kind of focus on Heritage.
When you’re doing a show like this, you want to educate and I think the puppet is just such an easy draw into that, because it doesn’t feel like it’s being forced upon you. This is a natural sort of thing.
Christopher: The language is important, the culture is important. First and foremost, it can’t feel like a PowerPoint presentation, right? I mean if that’s the case, just put up some slides and here’s this word, here’s that word. It has to be about stories and it has to be about characters. So, you know, we were very fortunate that Canadian Heritage and the Rupertsland Institute were willing to invest in this and make this opportunity possible for us.