an hour-long documentary about the resurgence of the Cree language in Northern Quebec

The picture is familiar enough - a school hallway full of chatting students.  

But the sound effects are unique. The students at Wiinebekuu School in Waskaganish are not  speaking English or French - they are speaking Cree, their own language. And that sets Wiinebekuu  apart from most Native Schools in Canada.  

Cree Spoken Here is an hour-long documentary about the resurgence of the Cree language in  Northern Quebec. Where once English and French dominated school life, young children are now  taught entirely in Cree.  

Cree filmmakers Ernest Webb and Neil Diamond tell a remarkably intimate story of the rebirth of  Cree through three generations. In the film, we meet elders such as Louisa Diamond who, unlike  other Natives in residential schools across Canada, was encouraged to speak Cree and learn syllabics  at her church-run school. Louisa's children weren't so lucky. Unlike their parents, Cree baby 

boomers such as Gordon Blackned, grew up in residential schools where students were forbidden to  speak their mother tongue. An entire generation of Crees began to lose their language and  themselves.  

Fast forward a generation later to a group of Cree women determined to revive their language and  culture, and the birth of the Cree Language of Instruction Program (CLIP). Programs like CLIP are  helping to reverse the tide of assimilation. Now children like 10-year-old Gloria Diamond write,  speak and read Cree fluently and ironically, little Gloria even corrects her parents' Cree vocabulary.  

"Understanding the importance of language to Native culture is to better understand the underlying  dysfunction in communities where language has been lost," says Webb, "There are more than 50  Native languages in Canada today. But experts believe that only three of them will survive this  century. Cree is one of them."