Language:
About 500 Metis people in North Dakota and scattered locations
in Canada still speak Michif, a unique French-Cree Creole using
French nouns, Cree verbs, and some local vocabulary borrowed from
Indian languages like Ojibway or Dene. Unlike most creoles, Michif
shows little if any grammatical simplification.
It's likely that Michif originated, not as a contact language
between Crees and Frenchmen trying to communicate with each other,
but as a badge of identity and occasionally-necessary.
Most Michif speakers today are fluent in neither Cree nor
French. Children are no longer learning Michif, leading the
language to be classes as heading for extinction. But there have
been efforts to restore its use as a cultural language in some
Metis communities.