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Time for Fair Treat of Indigenous Languages in Canada

It's time to stop telling stories of language death and tell stories of language life.
Language life would involve children being raised in their homes with their Indigenous languages as their primary language.

In many cases because of the age differences, some attention may be needed on creating an adult generation of speakers who in turn are able to raise children in their language.

This is entirely possible with the right supports, right curriculum, right language teaching methods – all of which exist. All of which is possible.
But this life is being assaulted by the policies of the Canadian government.
Colonialism is ongoing with our languages too.

Their language policies harm the life of our Indigenous languages. Our language speakers/learners can't compete against the overwhelming and dominance of English and French. The government could and should be doing more to treat Indigenous languages with equality and equity.

Yes, the governments won't give us our languages "back". Yes, our people have to want it. But our languages will struggle harder if the government continues to treat Indigenous languages as less than.

Fair funding for languages in post-secondary institutions.

Fair funding for languages in public schools.

Fair funding for Indigenous languages in public schools.

Fair funding for Indigenous languages in INAC schools.

Fair funding for Indigenous languages in broadcasting

Fair media regulations for Indigenous languages.

Equity for Indigenous Languages in Canada

From Darrell Ross Sr.:

"TRC says the combined total annual federal budget for these Aboriginal languages programs is $9.1 million. By way of comparison, the Official Languages Program for English and
French is projected to receive funding as follows:
• 2012–13: $353.3 million
• 2013–14: $348.2 million
• 2014–15: $348.2 million
Resources committed to Aboriginal language programs are far fewer than what is committed to French in areas where French speakers are in the minority (and the French Language is not in any danger of extinction). For example, the federal government provides support to the small minority of francophones in Nunavut in the amount of approximately $4,000 per individual annually. In contrast,funding to support Inuit-language initiatives is estimated at $44 per Inuk per year."

Place Names and Indigenous Struggle

(Photo taken in 1893 at Slhá7an̓ – a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh community in North Vancouver. The man in the back is my great-great grandfather Dan Paull.)

My great-grandfather Andy Paull talked in an interview about how his father Dan Paull took him by canoe to visit all the places in our Sḵwx̱wú7mesh territory with Sḵwx̱wú7mesh names. They would travel there frequently with his father transmitting the knowledge of what these place names were and the history behind them.

There are many place names I never took the time to dedicate myself to learning. Upon reflection what I notice is how this a microcosm for the rest of our language. The names of places I rarely visit or rarely talk about will drop from my memory. Our language is full of vocabulary our people would rarely use if we spoke our language, like language very specific to different fishing techniques or canoe traveling words.

To practice these words is to practice our culture.

It remains a struggle.

I safely call it a struggle because to choose our culture sometimes is to choose it over the many things our modern lives offer us. To train on the canoe when I could be playing video games or to harvest food off the land when I could go buy a steak at the Keg. These are all choices.

And they are choices we are only offered because of colonization.

And colonization keeps us from wanting to make the choice to practice this older way of life that our ancestors practiced.

Thus, it is a struggle.

So I raise my hands to the strugglers. To the believers. To the dreamers and the healers. To the ones who say, "I'm more interested in this way of life than that right now". We cannot make the same choice every single time we're offered the choice, but that we can constantly renew this ideal we carry that our ancestors way of life is something we still need and still important.

That the wars, the diseases, the reserve system or even the Residential Schools didn't fully succeed. It's not enough to just survive, we can also thrive.

Starting to Learn Kwak̕wala

Nearly four years ago I started my dream to become a fluent speaker of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. By chance or by design, nearly three years ago I started my journey to becoming a fluent Halkomelem speaker.

Tonight I started my journey to becoming a fluent Kwak̓wala speaker. I'll make my late granny Katherine even prouder.

Don't tell me it can't be done. The first step is to believe, then the next is to commit, then move step by step of the dream mountain until you a top of the sky looking back at how far you've come.

Why I Avoid "Word of the Day" Projects

I am a second language speaker at a Low-Advanced level of the Squamish Language. In 2010, I did a Master-Apprentice Program with a fluent speaker from my community. Her name is Vanessa Campbell of the Squamish Nation. For the 300+ hours we spent 100% immersed of our time in the language. In this project, I really discovered what really doesn't work for acquiring language speaking skills.

Translated lists.

I come across "Word of the Day" or "Word of the Week" projects a lot. Perhaps there's a staff at the local band office who sends out daily emails. Perhaps some young person makes meme's for instagram that shows a picture of an animal, a phrase in the language, and the English translation. Perhaps you've tried to learn the language through this method too.

I offer this blog post to problematize this approach and offer a critical engagement in the hopes we can do better.

Here are my 5 reasons for avoiding using "Word of the Day" projects in helping revitalize my language:

3.) Language Learning and Language Acquisition are two different activities. "Word of the Day" is not language acquisition.

Language acquisition is a process of internalizing the skills of speaking a language. This happens in three performance areas.

Interpersonal communication
Presentational speaking
Interpretive speaking.

Interpersonal communication the skill of communicating between other speakers. This performance area would include aspects like knowing how to talk to someone older than you versus talking to a stranger. It also includes being able to communicate simple to complex ideas in casual conversations like at a dinner or coffee shop with friends.

Presentational speaking is the skill of presenting one's ideas, stories, experiences, and vision to an audience. This differs from interpersonal communication because this performance area requires a specialized knowledge and supporting vocabulary for that knowledge. I can only present on topics I both feel informed about and have the vocabulary to communicate. I might make a presentation about an idea to go on a family vacation (where, when, how, with who) or I might make a presentation about building a community radio station.

Interpretive speaking is the skill of making interpretations of what other information is being presented to me. Perhaps for myself or perhaps to another person. Imagine someone standing on a podium giving a speech on the need for ending fossil subsidies and I have a friend not familiar with the subject sitting next to me. Interpretive speaking skills are about asking the question "Can I take what is being communicated and have a command of my language to re-communicate it to my friend who needs it interpreted for them?". It's a language speaking skill of interpreting another speaker.

I believe our goal is to become speakers of our languages and speaking is a skill, not an expertise. Educating people on what words mean is fine, but let's not pretend that that is "language revitalization". Skills are acquired, not just learned. Acquiring skills involves learning. For example, learning where things go, how a thing is put together, or how to use it. But there is a process to having a strong skill that involves practice, experimenting, and mentorship that leads a person to performing abilities they didn't have before. I can't just learn how to cook without actually cooking – I must acquire cooking skills by immersing myself in it.

Skill building is needed. Translated word of the day doesn't build skills; it teaches them about languages.

The question I ask people is, would you rather be able to talk about your language or would you rather be able to talk about your language in your language? One can acquired through learning (about) a language, the other is acquired through language acquisition.

2.) Translation creates translator's, not speakers.

Language acquisition should have this feeling of giving birth to a new brain. Our brain houses a lot of power that shapes who we are and how we behave. Every multilingual person I speak to concurs with this sensation of having a second brain where this other language exists.

Being a multilingual speaker feels like you have more than one "brain". And acquiring language should both feel like giving birth to a new brain and developing it. This new Mohawk, Cree, Haida, or Squamish language brain will be young. It starts off like a baby-brain, only able to issue simple commands and say a few words. But over time you should be able to think in this brain, create ideas in this brain, dream in this brain, and experience a different behavior in this brain. All multi-lingual speakers feel this.

This is why studies are often showing people's attitude and behavior change when they speak a different language.

Word of the Day projects don't create speakers of a language, they create translators. All they accomplish is helping your English-brain figure out what a handful of words mean. By having the new knowledge pass through your English brain, it will often have to be called upon by passing through that same English brain.

Language acquisition should not involve translation if you want to build strong speakers with strong Indigenous language brains. Translation just creates an unnecessary barrier. Every time you want to conjure a word in your speech, your mind first tries to recall the word, then tries to think of what that word is in English, then connects the English word with the Indigenous language word your English brain memorized.

Fluent speakers of a language on the other hand can conjure words by directly calling them from their Indigenous language brain. There is no extra step, so to speak, that it must pass through before it leaves the lips of your mouth. Becoming a language speaker, able to think in a language, only comes about when you've acquired language speaking skills. And skill building comes from immersion.

1.) Translating is how we've done it for decades and it hasn't produced many speakers.

Linguists, the charlatans they sometimes are, convinced our old time fluent elders in our communities that in order to save our language we needed to document it, preserve it, and analyze it.

You're telling us to taxidermy our language before they are even dead!

A lot of Indigenous language programs, when they were first created, were required to show some sort of formal curriculum. At the time, the only comparable second-language curricula was ones used to teach Spanish or French in the classroom. They focused on teaching grammar. We didn't realize there was a way to create immersion-based curriculum. Language curriculum where the focus is to only speak the language and teach the language by staying in the language.

Despite decades of the obvious staring us in the face (as elderly fluent speakers died amongst us), we never woke up to smell the coffee and realize this:

We may have been doing it wrong.

Language revitalization needs to be about reversing the decline of fluent and highly proficient speakers. We should be asking ourselves questions like:

How many highly proficient speakers did we have this year? Did we increase that number?
At what level of proficiency is our current second language learners? Are they improving in interpersonal communication, presentational speaking, interpretive speaking?
What spaces or institutions are needed, supported, or sustained in our communities where the language is protected, used habitually, or used exclusively? What is needed to support them more?

All of these questions are more important than "What kind of iPhone app that translates every word for people and creates no speakers of our language can we get funding for next?". Projects like "Word of the Day" and other translation-based strategies are focusing time, energy, and resources in the wrong direction. And at this critical stage in near extinction, wasted time & energy can be fatal to the ending of our language speaking communities.

I share these three points to add to the discussion about how we regenerate our languages and lead to better results. If the status quo is leading us to destruction, what is the risk in pointing out the problems with the status quo thinking and status quo directions we are taking? Maybe it's time to question and search out better ways of doing it.

For further reading on these ideas, and ideas on how to plan language acquisition in immersion-based approaches, I highly recommend reading these documents. They are extremely useful roadmaps for achieving strong speaking performance in various areas and rising in one's proficiency of a language: