Andrea Custer is an asinīskāwiskwīw (Rock Cree Woman) from wapāwikoscikanihk (Narrows of Fear), known in English as Pelican Narrows, Saskatchewan. She is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation.
Andrea is a fluent, first language speaker of Cree (TH dialect). Her extensive education background includes a B.A. in Indigenous Studies from First Nations University of Canada; a secondary B.Ed. (minor in teaching Cree as a second language) from the University of Alberta; a M.Ed. in Indigenous Land-Based Education from the University of Saskatchewan and she has been accepted into a Ph.D. program at the University of Victoria with a focus on Indigenous Language Revitalization which she will begin in July 2023.
Andrea has taught Cree language since 2014 in various educational settings from elementary, junior to high school in Saskatchewan and Alberta and has worked as a Cree Language resource developer. She is currently the Program Coordinator for the Indigenous Languages program at First Nations University of Canada where she also teaches introductory and intermediate level Cree courses. For the last three years, she has been mentored by Solomon Ratt and Arok Wolvengrey, about Cree Standard Roman Orthography and the structure of the Cree language.
Andrea is also the founder and Chair for the Rock Cree Language Council Inc., the podcast co-host, producer, and content creator of the podcast Cree and Coffee, the co-owner of Indigenous 1st Designs.
Andrea is the co-author of the book “Speaking Cree in the Home, A Beginner’s Guide for Families” where she shares her experiences as a teacher and a mother trying to raise her children in an English dominant society. In this book, Andrea shares her 2nd language teaching methodologies, Cree Standard Roman Orthography and what she has learned in her professional career as a Cree language educator.