Issue 1 2026 – Chiefs of Ontario Advocate magazine 
20  l
LANGUAGE
G
eraldine Govender is in the 
middle of a story when she 
stops to explain how Moose 
Factory got its name. 
The origin dates back to 1673, when 
the Hudson’s Bay Company established 
a trading post there. “The person that 
was the boss there, they used to call him 
a ‘Factor.’ So that’s why the name [is] 
Moose Factory – not that we make the 
moose here,” she says.
That humour, and the ability to build 
an entire picture from a few carefully 
chosen words, is one of the qualities 
Govender treasures most about Moose 
Cree, the distinctive L-dialect spoken 
in her home community. A member of 
Moose Cree First Nation, Govender has 
spent nearly two decades documenting 
and creating opportunities to learn the 
language. As director of language & 
cultural programs for the First Nation, 
she has led work on four editions of  
the Dictionary of Moose Cree, a  
grammar book, a storybook, eight 
reading books for children and three  
language applications.
For Govender, language revitalization 
means survival. “I think, in many of our 
situations, language revitalization is really 
going to mean saving our languages, 
because they are all in danger of being 
lost,” she says.
Moose Cree is spoken primarily in 
Moose Factory, with a mixture of L- and 
N-dialects spoken in Kashechewan. “It’s 
a very unique dialect spoken only here in 
Moose Factory, this little community,” 
Govender says. “It’s very much in danger 
of being lost. […] We’d be hard-pressed  
to identify about 70 fluent speakers,  
and our First Nation has more than  
5,000 members.
“It’s a special dialect because it’s our 
language, and there’s really no one else 
who is going to come and save it for us.”
Growing up, Govender was 
surrounded by Cree. “When I was a 
child, all we heard was Cree. We spoke 
Cree, and then we went to school.” 
Although her family’s children did not 
attend the residential school in Moose 
Factory, pressure to abandon Cree still 
reached their home. “Our parents were 
always being told, ‘Don’t speak to your 
children in Cree. They need to learn 
English to make it out there in the world.’ 
“There are whole generations where 
the language wasn’t being spoken. Now, 
I think it’s probably two generations, 
maybe even three.”
Govender moved back home in 
1980 after earning a Bachelor of Arts in 
Native Studies from Trent University. 
Although she worked in social and health 
organizations, culture remained central 
to her life. “I’m not a teacher,” she says. 
“I actually worked more in the social 
and health fields. But I’ve always been 
interested in the culture, promoting 
ceremonies and bringing those back to 
the community. Those things are closely 
tied to the language, too.”
Govender describes herself as learning 
Moose Cree again. She spent years 
waiting for the perfect teacher, with every 
required skill. “I was always waiting for 
an expert to come along. Someone who 
was fluent in Moose Cree, [who] could 
read and write in syllabics and knew how 
to teach it.”
Geraldine Govender leads effort in Moose Cree First Nation
Language Revitalization
BY ANDREW ST. GERMAIN

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