Beginning February 1, 2026, students in Garden Hill, Manitoba began using new daily reading calendars designed to help them practice Oji‑Cree (Anishininimowin) at home. The Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre (MFNERC) created the tools to celebrate I Love to Read Month and support local language skills.
The calendars offer daily activities for families to do together — for example, learning names for local animals or reading a story with an Elder. The resources highlight the local Oji‑Cree dialect used in Island Lake communities, including Garden Hill, to help bridge classroom literacy and everyday language use at home.
The initiative is part of a larger effort to keep heritage languages alive. In 2021, about 13.1% of the Indigenous population in Canada reported they could speak an Indigenous language well enough to conduct a conversation. MFNERC produced calendars in the seven Indigenous languages recognized by Manitoba’s Aboriginal Languages Recognition Act — including Cree, Dakota and Michif — and distributed the materials to First Nations schools across the province.
Teachers at Kistiganwacheeng Elementary School are distributing physical copies to students, and digital versions are available for download from MFNERC’s Learning Hub. The Manitoba Aboriginal Languages Strategy (MALS), a partner in the effort, aims to make language learning a normal part of daily community life by encouraging short, achievable daily goals.
