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Grocery shopping in South Slavey
School board brings aboriginal language to stores

Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Monday, March 20, 2017

HAY RIVER
Some grocery stores in the South Slave have joined an effort to promote aboriginal languages.

Shopping in Two Worlds is an initiative of the South Slave Divisional Education Council to put aboriginal languages on tags identifying items in the grocery stores.

The tags, which include the aboriginal word for the food, an accompanying image and a scannable quick response (QR) code, slide in next to the pricing labels in grocery stores.

Customers can download a free QR scanner on their smartphones to scan the new tags and hear the product name spoken aloud in Cree, Slavey or Chipewyan, depending on the languages spoken in their community.

"If we want the traditional aboriginal languages of our communities once again spoken proudly and fluently, we need to turn common everyday experiences like shopping for groceries into language learning opportunities," stated Brent Kaulback, the retired assistant superintendent with the education council, in a news release.

The idea first began at the Ehdah Cho Store on the Hay River Reserve about a year ago.

It has now been expanded to Super A Foods in Hay River, Kaeser's Store in Fort Smith and the Lutsel K'e Co-op in Lutsel K'e.

While the initiative has been launched as part of Aboriginal Languages Month in March, stores may keep the signage on display all year long.

Steve Anderson, a manager at Super A Foods, said the store was approached by the education council about Shopping in Two Worlds and agreed to become involved in what he described as a "fantastic" idea.

About 40 tags in the South Slavey language were installed at Super A in late February. Anderson said he saw one customer scan the QR codes with her smartphone and listen to the aboriginal words with her young son.

"They got a little bit of fun out of it and they found it quite interesting," he said.

Pam Balsillie, an employee of Super A, noted an elder who was shopping at the store noticed the language tags and started pronouncing the words.

"She was really pleased that she was seeing actual Slavey," said Balsillie, who is from Fort Resolution and can speak some Chipewyan.

Anderson said it is possible the aboriginal language tags will remain at Super A beyond Aboriginal Languages Month.

"I think it would be nice to actually have on a continuous basis because they don't really get in the way and it respects other languages, and I think that's important," he said.

In Hay River and on the Hay River Reserve, the tags are in Slavey. In Fort Resolution and Lutsel K'e, the tags are in Chipewyan, and in Fort Smith they are in Chipewyan and Cree.

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