Indigenous languages vital to sustaining culture: teacher
When Rose Pacquette was growing up in Fond du Lac, she learned how to live from her mother and father, who spoke to her in Dene.
The words conveyed a world view that stressed the value that each person’s unique strengths brought to the community, the shared responsibility to raise children correctly and a respect for the ancestors that instilled pride in the present.
Now, there seems to be less harmony among people and more competition, families are more isolated from each other and are less willing to accept another adult correcting their child and youngsters are less open to correction, she said.
The elders knew their children needed to learn the language of white society but the introduction of technology and easier travel has seen the English language push the traditional one to the sidelines, she said.
Pacquette, a retired teacher who created and taught a Dene immersion nursery school class early in her career, now sees more and more children unable to speak the language of their grandparents.
“We have a culture we should be proud of. Our language tells us who we are, who our people were and where we came from. There’s strength in that.
“The culture that was imposed on us forced us to follow a different path,” she said.
Three-quarters of the 60 to 90 Indigenous languages in Canada are at risk of disappearing, said Arif Virani, parliamentary secretary to Heritage Minister Melanie Joly,
Virani is visiting Saskatchewan, consulting Indigenous language teachers to inform Canada’s first federal legislation to preserve Indigenous languages, to be introduced in 2018. It’s an answer to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, he said.
Discussions with language keepers and teachers across the country are intended to “co-develop” the legislation, a practise Virani said is “not unheard of, but it’s very, very rare,” compared to the standard practice of getting feedback from standing committees on legislation that’s already written.
Ottawa has bolstered the previous government’s $5 million per year to the Aboriginal Languages initiative with a promise of $90 million over three years. That will include $20 million for preserving oral histories and digitizing archives so it can be transmitted in the future.
“Once you have a formal legislation, the monies to support it will be significant ... We understand that you need to have funding for programs,” Virani said.
“The magic will be in ensuring that we empower communities as part of that co-development model and giving them the autonomy they deserve in reclaiming the language but reclaiming the authority in delivering the programs.”
The average age of fluent language speakers is increasing, meaning fewer young people can communicate in the language of their elders.
“We don’t want those language speakers dying off before we can preserve those languages. So there’s a sense of urgency there,” he said.
Saving Indigenous languages is an urgent priority for the government, which is committed to trying to undo some of the harms of the residential schools, which systemically prevented children from using their languages, he said.
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