My Aboriginal chief isn’t the only First nation character in my dictionary, as the following ASL words will show.
When illustrating the American Sign Language hand signs for countries, provinces, and cities, I try to have the image represent the people who live there. For the United States, I have Uncle Sam for Canada, the Canadian Royal Guard. As the Canadian city of Winnipeg has the largest total population of Indigenous people, a native Cree woman illustrates this hand sign. The city’s name is from Lake Winnipeg, while the lake’s name comes from the Western Cree words “Win-nippe” for muddy water.
