Five Ideas to Support Indigenous Language Revitalization in Canada
The first reading that stood out to me from this week’s selection was the video that talked about five different ways that we could support and bring back Indigenous languages to Canada. It was a short two-minute video that shared informational facts about their languages and how they can still be brought back to Canada. In this video I learned that there are seventy ways to greet someone in Canada but many of these Indigenous languages were lost through the acts forced assimilation and through genocide. It is through the resilience that the language is being revived through their people.
Already today, over two-hundred and sixty thousand people still fluently speak Indigenous languages, and the number continues to rise. I have been an educational assistant for the past year and a half working among many schools. When I was working in Saskatoon, I worked in many Cree speaking schools which was neat and important to not only me, but those students’ family as they are able to speak and learn their mother tongue again which showed that everyone can revive their language. The last thing the video shared was a variety of different ideas to show how we can all revive their language. Some of those ideas were learning different greetings and quick responses in their languages, learn some of their key words, learn different names of stuff like lakes and towns using their local language, as well as watching different movies or TV shows. These are all easy things you could do to help you learn more about their language and the history of it.
Reference
UVic. (2018, November 16). Retrieved October 25, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8Zf-Id0SQ4
Indigenous Languages in Canada
The second reading that stood out to be was PDF brochure which happened to go hand in hand with the video I talked about earlier. Since the video did not go into detail about the facts that it has shared, they made an information sheet to go with it that goes into more detail. In this I had learned that Indigenous languages is in fact a human right. It talks about how everyone is putting in great efforts to bring back their languages so they can have a positive impact on their families, communities as well as themselves since it is a part of Canada’s history and their own history.
Their languages continue to be more spoken on their reserve land which is common as they are more consistent, and they are with their people’s more consistently. The last thing I had found interesting from this reading was how they talked about their right to take all their learnings and languages and share then amongst the younger and future generations to carry on their languages, histories, oral traditions, writing systems, literatures, and philosophies. These are the valuable things that have once been forgotten but need to continue doing to ensure that they are not forgotten again.
Reference
McIvor, O. (2018). Indigenous languages in Canada:
What you need to know. Ottawa, ON, Canada: CCUNESCO.