Code-talking Cree: Winning the war with words

From the First and Second World Wars to Korea and the peacekeeping missions of today, Nov. 11 has, for decades, been set aside to acknowledge the wartime sacrifices Canadians have made throughout the 20th century and beyond. 

But Indigenous Canadians and their contributions to the war effort were not recognized specifically until Aboriginal Veterans Day was established in Manitoba in 1994. It has since spread across the country to the other provinces and has been renamed National Indigenous Veterans Day, recognized annually on Nov. 8.

It’s a chance to remember heroes like Francis Pegahmagabow. Born in Wasauksing First Nation (known as Parry Island Band when Pagahmagabow served), Pegahmagabow enlisted in August of 1914, almost immediately after the First World War was declared. 

Known by many soldiers as ‘Peggy,’ he developed a reputation as an excellent scout. According to writings about Pegahmagabow obtained by Veterans Affairs Canada, "His iron nerves, patience and superb marksmanship helped make him an outstanding sniper." 

He fought in the battles at Ypres, the Somme and Belgium, and his battalion joined the assault near the village of Passchendaele, fighting to victory in one of the most difficult battles the allies faced.

But unfortunately, due to poor record keeping, it is difficult to identify the exact number of Indigenous men and women who served, but Veteran’s Affairs Canada estimates as many as 12,000 served in the wars of the 20th century (4,000 in the First World War and 3,000 in the Second, as well as those who served in Korea.) Recent research shows that this does not include the thousands of soldiers who did not identify as Indigenous when they enlisted. 

Indigenous people who enlisted experienced racially biased recruitment policies, with the majority funneled into the Canadian Army instead of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) or the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). 

According to enlistment rules at the time, the RCAF was only for “British subjects of pure European descent” until 1942, and in the RCN, for those “of pure European descent and of the white race,” until 1943.

But while many Indigenous soldiers were sent to the front lines, some were sent directly to  London, where they learned a special mission was waiting for those who could speak their language, most notably, Cree and Ojibwe. 

There isn’t much in the way of documentation about the so-called “code talkers” from Canada. Thanks to pop culture, many are more familiar with the Najavo code talkers who worked with the American armed forces during the Second World War. 

Even the documentation of their existence remained highly classified until the Canadian government released the information in 1963, but even that did not paint the full picture. Even after the information release, it remains unclear how many code talkers there actually were. 

While the Navajo code talkers were well-known, their skills were employed primarily in the Pacific Theatre, sometimes referred to as the Asia-Pacific War, whereas the Cree language was used primarily in Europe.

As a language not spoken by many outside of Canada, Cree became a language the Allied forces could send messages in, without fear of their contents being understood. 

The ‘codes’ of code talkers was simply the Cree language, with the messages including troop movements, identification of supply lines or aircraft that were to carry out bombing runs from England. 

After the messages were translated into Cree, they were received on the front lines by another code talker, and translated to English for the officers and military strategists, without fear of the opposition understanding plans. 

Shirley Anderson, the niece of code talker Charles Tomkins, provided some examples of coded language in a 2017 interview: ‘iskotew’ (“fire”), was the code word for the Spitfire plane, and ‘pakwatastim’ (“wild horse”), was the word for the Mustang aircraft.

In honour of Indigenous Remembrance Day, you can visit the monument to Frank Pegahmagabow, created by Sudbury’s Tyler Fauvelle, at the Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts in Parry Sound. Or, if you are in the Ottawa-area, you can visit the National Aboriginal Veterans Monument in Confederation Park.

Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com. She covers the diverse communities of Sudbury, especially the vulnerable or marginalized, including the Black, Indigenous, newcomer and Francophone communities, as well as 2SLGBTQ+ and issues of the downtown core.