Everybody's Wrong But Me

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The Enduring Voices project from the National Geographic Society has recently identified five “global hotspots” where languages are rapidly disappearing. One of these five regions is the Pacific Northwest of North America.

Although many reasons explain the endangered status of Native languages, the main blow was the Residential School System established in Canada by French and British missionaries from the 17th century to convert Native populations to Christianity.

In the beginning, missionaries were encouraged to learn native languages. But from the late 19th century, the use of these native languages was greatly discouraged, mainly by directives coming from the Department of Indian Affairs, and the use of English greatly encouraged if not forced. Schools usually punished children (sometimes quite severely) for using native languages. In addition to punishment, isolation was the main reason for the lost of languages. Children were usually separated from their communities for months, sometimes seeing their families only during the two months of summer.

The Coast Salish people’s homeland is located around the Georgia Straight and Puget Sound and includes the locations of present-day cities of Vancouver and Seattle. The Salish people spoke about a dozen languages; today most are only spoken by few individuals, rarely under 60 years of age. Halkomelem is the language spoken on the territory that is now the city of Vancouver. The Halkomelem language includes three dialects: The Upriver (or Sto:lo) dialect spoken in the Fraser Valley; the Downriver dialect, spoken roughly in what is now the GVRD; and the Island dialect, spoken on the East Coast of Vancouver Island, around what is now Nanaimo.

Halkomelem (all dialects) is spoken by about 200 individuals, of which none are under 15 years old! The Musqueam (downriver) dialect is spoken fluently by only a handful of people. But, according to Larry Grant, Elder of the Musqueam Nation and teacher of Halkomelem at UBC, “a majority of the community’s 1200 members do understand a lot of words in the language.”

Dr Suzanne Gessner, Director of the First Nations Languages Program at UBC, insists on the difference between languages and dialects, because many individuals don’t know the difference very well. Basically, if two people can understand each other, they speak the same language. If they have some different expressions and tones but still can understand each other then they speak two different dialects of the same language. Numbers of speakers, prestige status or having a written form has nothing to do with it. English is a language; Scottish, Australian or Jamaican English are dialects. There are about 37 First Nations languages in BC, of which three have already disappeared, but the other languages can still be learned and passed to the younger generation.

First Nations people are slowly taking control of teaching their respective heritage, culture and languages. But, the effects of colonisation had a profound and sometime twisted impact. One of the major challenges in teaching languages where most speakers are elderly is precisely that elders don’t necessarily have the energy or ability to teach to children. The middle generation needs to intervene to teach themselves the language they are learning from their parents.

The challenges are enormous and pressing. Dr Gessner notices that most First Nations want to educate their children, but they need long-term stable funding. In her opinion, grants and one-time financial settlements, while helpful, are not as essential as long-term stable funding that needs, perhaps, to be incorporated into the Ministry of Education programs. Documentation is required in the form of books for children but also to record and write down the current knowledge of elders. Funding is also necessary for training and teaching and also for computer application. Dr Gessner adds that First Nations should be given the means to take control of teaching their respective languages.

There are some successes that gives hope to save First Nations languages. The Nisga’a have control of their own education and are able to teach their language in school. About 30 children now speak the language. Same for the Shuswap Nation where the Chief Atahm School of Adam’s Lake made it so that about 40 children and teens can speak Secwepemc, and more are learning. The Lillooet Band has also just started a school to teach Stl’atl’imx.

With the First Nations languages disappearing, it’s not just a means of communication that is fading, but also a whole different way to see and understand the universe. But the future of mankind is not written in stone, and the First Nations languages of British Columbia are still alive. However, actions must be taken now to pass this knowledge on to future generations before it is too late.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 16:29 and is filed under British Columbia, Culture.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.