TikTok LIVE Replay June 15/25 - Transcribing Irene Finday 1885 Resistance
Tonight we're going to take a bit of a detour. The most interesting thing happened to me in the last few days. Last fall, I was in Winnipeg with the Transcription Society for a few days while we recorded some stories from some elders. There I met Wes Fineday from Sweet grass. If you don't know Wes, he's the great grandson of THE Fineday from "My Cree People" and the various stories recorded by Leonard Bloomfield in the 1920s.
Not only that Wes is a prominent knowledge keeper within his community and shares his stories and his knowledge very freely. You can find Wes in the recently-released pod/video-cast series âsokan: Building Bridges (https://creeliteracy.org/2025/06/10/a...)
So back to our Sunday night LIVE. I have it on the calendar to go to a camp with Wes sometime this summer , and out of the blue Wes calls me the other day and we discussed various things. On the call, he mentions that he has some old tapes, and I happened to mention that I like to digitize tapes and that he should have them digitized as soon as possible. After the call that made me think of the late Tyrone Tootoosis tapes, which I happen to have a few of from a now-defunct website, and I randomly decided to load up one of those tapes to do a little transcribing. In face _tape 6a_.
10 seconds into the tape I hear the usual, "Tyrone Tootoosis, 1994, Sweetgrass Reserve" and then "interviewing Elder Irene Fineday on the 1885 resistance...".
I stopped, and I wrote Wes, "do you know an 'Irene Finday'?" I ask.
"That was my mom."
I'm stunned. I randomly happen to open the exact tape that is a recording of Wes' mother, so I send him a copy.
And so tonight I being the process of transcribing that tape so that I might enlist Wes to help me with the tricky parts when I get to Sweetgrass in July.
That's the story! Enjoy the video.
#plainscree #nêhiyawêwin #indigenouslanguages #cree #languagerevitalization