BOOKS

The producers of CBC Radio Manitoba invited Bonnie and Ajah in for an interview to talk about how their book “I Wish” came about. This is what was aired on October 26, 2022: click here to listen to that interview.

Published by Indigenous Languages of Manitoba Inc.

Author: Bonnie Loewen
Translated by: Grace Schedler
Illustrated by: Marlowe Heinrichs
Voiced by: Ajah Whitstone

Ajah Whitstone Loewen, the girl depicted in this book, reads the Ininiw and English versions of this poem for this audio recording. Ajah learns Ininiw from Grace Schedler. Bonnie and Grace are partners with Circles for Reconciliation. During one of their coffees, preparing for another circle, Grace learned from Bonnie that she and Ajah wanted to translate I wish into Ininiw. And once Grace tackled that job, she took on Ajah as an Ininiw student. And so, the journey began. Through zoom, phone calls, audio recordings, and in person meetings, Grace began teaching Ajah Ininiw. Ajah says "ᐊᕀᐦᐊᕀ (Ayhay) Grace. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“I Wish is a poem that tells how the world and all of its beauty and discovery invites our senses to make us whole. A girl, lying in the grasses, close to a lake, tells of how her eyes touch, her hands hear, her ears taste, her tongue smells and her nose sees. As she senses the world around her, she becomes whole and in her wholeness her “wish" turns to love.”

- Indigenous Languages of Manitoba Inc.

Orange Shirt Day - September 30th, 2022

For a school assembly’s orange shirt day, Bonnie and her daughter Ajah presented what is spoken in this audio. They thank Grace Schedler, their Ininiw teacher, for teaching them the words and their Ininiw meaning, and to Aimée Craft, for inspiring them with a deeper understand about Treaty, through her book Treaty Words, and to Janessa Roy, a Métis woman who teaches at Ajah’s school, who created space for this telling.