Woods Cree

Woods Cree is an indigenous language spoken in Northern Manitoba, Northern Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta, Canada. It is part of the Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi dialect continuum. The dialect continuum has around 116,000 speakers; the exact population of Woods Cree speakers is unknown, estimated between 2,600 and 35,000.

The Woods Cree language belongs to the Algic family, within the Algonquian subfamily, and the central Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi language group.

Western Cree is a term used to refer to the non-palatized Cree dialects, consisting of Northern Plains Cree, Southern Plains Cree, Woods Cree, Rock Cree, Western Swampy Cree, Eastern Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and Atikamekw. Western Woods Cree is the term used to refer to the Cree languages west of the Hudson Bay. This includes the languages Rock Cree, western Swampy Cree, and Strongwoods or Bois Fort Cree. James G.E. Smith classified the linguistic nature of the languages of Woods Cree, northern Plains Cree, western Swampy Cree, and the extinct dialect of Misinipi or Rock Cree to all fall under the Western Woods Cree languages.

Another name for Woods Cree is Rocky Cree, translated by Rossignol (1939) from the Cree word asiniˑskaˑwiðiniwak. Rock Cree or Misinipi Cree was a "r" dialect of Cree but now have merged with Woods Cree, together as the "th" dialect of Cree spoken by the group of people geographically located at the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains.

In Alberta, Woods Cree is also known as Bush Cree.

Precise classification of the Woods Cree language has not been sufficiently documented. Many different names and terms have been used in the description of the "th" dialect of Cree spoken in the forested area north of the Canadian prairies. A more general, all-encompassing term for this dialect is "Woodland Cree", which also refers to the cultural group living in the forested area north of the prairies. This term is used, for example, in separating the cultural groups of Cree people who live in the wooded area from the Plains Cree, who traditionally inhabited the prairies to the south.

The language portal of Canada has divided all Cree languages west of Ontario up until the Rocky Mountains into four main subgroups: Plains Cree, Swampy Cree, Moose Cree and Woods Cree. However, in referring to the Woods Cree language they use the terms Woodland and Rock interchangeably. Whether these terms are interchangeable when referring to the Cree "th" dialect however has not been explicitly determined.

Different sources in Canadian history texts document the area in which Woods Cree was and still is spoken today. In the early 1900s, J.B. Tyrrell, a Canadian geologist and cartographer and the editor of explorer David Thompson's work found that the people living in the area of Île-à-la-Crosse and upper Churchill River referred to themselves as Nahathaway and spoke the particular -th dialect of Woods Cree. The Hudson's Bay Company had made record of the area west of James Bay being inhabited by people speaking the -th dialect of Cree. This region of Woods Cree speakers has essentially remained the same until present.