Video — Indigenous Languages Symposium — January 27, 2021
Transcript of Indigenous Languages Symposium — Morning session, January 27, 2021
Length: 1 :15 :35
Mathieu: But all with that, what I would like to do is invite Mr. Kimura.
Larry Kimura (LK): [Greetings in Hawaiian]. So, greetings to you all indigenous peoples of Canada and non-indigenous peoples of Canada and the world. This is really a tremendous time, I’m sure, for you there in Canada as well as for us here in Hawaii. So, my name is Larry Kimura. I’m an associate professor here at the College of Hawaiian Language and I will try and present a brief summary of our experience in doing our work in Hawaiian language revitalization. I’ve kind of labelled this presentation as “money can’t buy everything” as we all know, but certainly money does help. For our experience here in Hawaii, we started actually with no funding, no money, and our goal here in Hawaii was to return our language to our children. The youngest age that we could reach at that time was preschool-aged children—which would be here two and a half to three years old, up to five—which meant for us that we would use our languages, the medium of instructions because we would conduct preschool, not childcare centre, but a preschool that would include a curriculum and trained personnel, teachers to conduct this program. However, the main purpose, of course, was to bring life back to our language and our families. A major—a real important thing to do is to dream big and for us, returning the language to where it rightfully belongs in our homeland meant that the language must live for today. It’s good to, of course, acknowledge where our traditional information comes from, our language and our traditions and our culture. But as our motto for our university, our College of Hawaiian Language here at the University, at Hilo. We have ten campuses now in the state of Hawaii, but here in Hilo is O Keʻelikōlani, meaning that the language binds us to our identity and the aspects of our identity include all kinds of aspects that need to be grounded in our wellbeing. And language plays a major role in the welfare of who we are. So, going back, I think, to a little history where funding was not a concern. However, funding does play a role. As I said, the major goal here for now—the fabric of what we’re using for Hawaiian language revitalization is a formal institution of learning which is school. Therefore, as I mentioned, we started with our Pūnana Leo schools in 1983 and have moved forward until now. So, to start this kind of a program, as I said, we were not paying attention to money. We only were paying attention to what we needed to do. And so, we needed a place; we needed personnel; we found that through the generosity or non-generosity of people in our immediate communities. We have to be very creative. We meet up with hurdles. We do not allow hurdles to stop us because our goal is always there; present, always until now. A greater goal beyond the walls of an institution would be out into our mainstream society which we would be calling the renormalizing—or making our language normal again out there—McDonald’s and shopping centres, on the streets here of our community. So those are the goals. And we still do not have a standing budget. We don’t have major funding directed specifically for this work… Back in 1921 when the Hawaiian language was allowed to be used as one of the language choice requirements for the humanities study in the College of Arts and Sciences as one of those languages that could be used. However, there were some challenges back then in 1907 when the territory of Hawaii—we were an independent government of a kingdom of Hawaii that was overthrown by the United States—and, of course, that’s when our language was banned from being used as a language of instruction. However, getting back to this required use of… the Hawaiian language actually was categorized as a foreign language, therefore in a college of humanities. So, in 1907, the territorial government set up a college of agriculture and mechanical arts. It wasn’t until 1919 that the concern for humanities—what we call today the College of Arts and Sciences—became a priority. So, in the program of the College of Arts and Sciences would be the requirement of a foreign language. When the list of languages was presented to our territorial government—legislature—the languages of German, French, Greek and Latin were the languages and being that our territorial government back in 1919 consisted of members who actually served in the legislature of the kingdom of Hawaii, they were concerned about Hawaiian. So, they insisted that Hawaiian be listed as one of those foreign language choices. In 1921, Hawaiian language started to be taught at the University of Hawaii in the College of Arts and Sciences. That was the beginning of the formal—how do you say—teaching of Hawaiian as a course at the university level. So, this may be—of course—was being paid through the funding of the territorial government. Now, we didn’t see much of an enrolment back in those early years until maybe 1950. And there we see a start of—not quite 100, maybe about 60 to 70 students enrolled. But as we moved into the’60s, there is a bigger enrolment. And from the’60s to the’70s, there is 100% double enrolment, figure enrolment. And especially from the’70s until 1976 or so, we see a 500+% increase in enrolment. Now all of this increase is indicating what is happening in our community. At that time, there is this concept of what we call today a cultural reawakening for the Hawaiian identity. There are many factors that played a role in this. One of them was the sound of what we call in Hawaii—we were using our language in Hawaiian music, and young people got involved with that. That’s one of the—another thing is that the statehood of Hawaii occurred in 1959, so ten years after, which would make it about 1970, there was concern for some urban development occurring especially on our main island of Oahu where the capital of Honolulu is. And Hawaiian farmers, agricultures, were being evicted from lands that returned into urban sprawl. Now, these things along with the music affected young students who said, “I would like to take Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaii while I’m a student there.” First of all, they weren’t given special funding, scholarship, to enrol in these classes. They were doing it because they were interested, genuinely interested. This whole concept of motivating a people to become interested in who they are is a process. This is where money cannot buy that kind of motivation. It comes from within the people. So, this is what was occurring at that time—this reawakening, this renaissance as we know it today. Back then, there were these rumblings going on; no one really knew exactly… many people never noticed the enrolment, for example, going up 500+%. Nobody was noticing these little things that were occurring. So, as the language program progressed at the university level, there was a need for degree. There was no degree because students wanted to major in the Hawaiian culture and the Hawaiian language. So, by 1980, there was the established degree—a bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian studies. Currently, of course, we have graduate degrees, masters and PhD. We have also established a teacher-training program for qualifying our teachers to be Hawaiian language immersion or Hawaiian medium teachers through our Department of Education program, since the Pūnana Leo started this whole program back in 1983. So, by 1987, we were able to convince our department to start an experimental program in educating our children only through the language of Hawaiian. That’s history now. So, with 20 high school graduations from kindergarten all the way up to high school totally in Hawaiian medium education. In regards to the fabric of Hawaiian language revitalization through the medium of using our own language to educate our children, in order that our language lives for today and tomorrow, we need to be aware of the priority of producing new fluent speakers of our language as our native speaking elders pass away. And that—also at the same time, we need to document our elders and maintain and create a repository that can substantiate and support the efforts being used to address the curriculum that we will be using and, of course, the language that we’ll be promoting for today and for tomorrow. So, to summarize this short presentation, motivation is crucial from the people themselves. And how does that happen here in our Hawaiian experience? It was through the little babies from a family at home who were affected directly and that spread like wildfire. And when I say educated through the language, I mean successfully because we convinced the department to continue to pay for this public education—talking about funding—until today. So, this is over 37 years of public education through the medium of Hawaiian. So, we’re celebrating our 20th high school graduation. So, to complete a successful cycle, going vertical versus going horizontal was the goal because we needed to make this a successful story and then at the same time, begin to stimulate our families to pay attention, to be aware and to be interested in participating. Things that money cannot buy. So, I’d mentioned earlier about the Hawaiian renaissance back in the late’60s, early 70s and at that time, as I said, Hawaiian music played a key role. So, I call this a sound of the Hawaiian renaissance—and Hawaiian meaning the lyrics to our Hawaiian songs were in the language. And I happened to compose a mele or a chant I’d like to share with you that I feel summarizes the renewed interests in spirit of our people to participate in this new—I guess you say movement for the life of our language and for our identity. 'Ōlelo mahalo. Thank you so much for this opportunity to share very briefly a major topic with you and hopefully it can inspire you, and we can look forward to sharing again many more times on this concern for our language, our cultural identity—that it may live on forever. Mahalo.
[Hawaiian music]
Mathieu: Thank you, Larry. That was a great movie—great video. I’m suggesting that we use that background music now for the rest of our meeting. So, Larry, the floor is all yours.
LK: Hi. [Greetings in Hawaiian]. Good morning. I’m saying good morning from Hilo, Hawaii. Looks like the morning is getting a bit sunnier today. We just had our first major snowfall at our big mountain here at Mauna Kea these past couple days. Anyway, I’m glad to be here with you today. Must be noon for you.
Mathieu: We were entering into the Question and Answer section. I’m sure that all of my participants out there—the first thing they think about when they think about Hawaii is not snowfall. Because here we are sitting in the middle of snowfalls here in Canada. It must be beautiful there. I’m also thinking of changing my shirt because you look a lot more comfortable than I do in my suit here.
LK: Well certainly it’s comfortable here in Hawaii to wear our kind of shirts that we wear.
Mathieu: Yeah, it’s beautiful. Beautiful. I do have a question—I guess it’s more really around the advice. What advice might you give in terms of moving forward in the models and developing funding—if you could speak a little bit on how you started with no funding in terms of how your initiatives started. It was really people-based. I’m wondering in terms of effectively supporting indigenous peoples in their efforts to reclaim, revitalize and strengthen, and maintain their indigenous knowledge, what kind of model for funding would you see—what kind of funding would work?
LK: Well, you know, for us as I said, because we weren’t looking at money, we were looking at what we needed to do to get our language back. And that money would be, of course, there, but in other words, I guess the main thing is that money would not direct the way we would like to do our work. And I have to say that “we” means just a small group of people. We felt, as I said in my presentation, that we needed at that point to get our language back into the mouths of our young babies in order to regenerate a new generation of speakers—because the decline of our native speaking number was in rapid decline. Of course, today we count maybe about 20 or so native speakers. And they’re really the younger generation—they’re younger than my grandparents. My grandfather was born in 1873 and my grandmother who was born in 1896; that generation of solid native speakers are no longer here, of course. So, we’re looking at regenerating and therefore this is the effort that we put into what we call now, of course, preschool. And we wanted to do an educational program that went from the babies all the way up to high school—to do a vertical effort and to not lose sight of making this complete cycle successful so that we could bring in the people that we needed to attract, which would be parents of children. So, we actually did not have to—how do I say—campaign so much to bring in families because as this was going on and people were observing this—and you know among our Hawaiian people, the word gets around pretty quickly. So, we were attracting the people that we wanted to attract which—of course we’re not saying that you are only involved with our program if you are ethnically Hawaiian. No. In Hawaii, it’s open to all races, all people. However, 95%, 96% of our children, our families are ethnic Hawaiian.
Mathieu: So, I guess you’re kind of talking about really a comprehensive kind of support network where you’re talking children who are preschool, the interaction with their parents and supporting that environment in terms of language revitalization or use, right up to high school. So, all those different kinds of support, I would imagine, require different sources and types of—your presentation said it’s not all about money—supports, maybe.
LK: Yeah, and it just happened that the support… I’m now into my 70s. Back then I was in my 20s. When I started to teach at the university, I was 26 years old, in 1971. This is where that kind of support—I’m talking about making Hawaiian known at our tertiary level at the university that needed to support what we were going to be doing with our babies. And that support continues till today, and this is how we could build on establishing bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian language, master’s degree in Hawaiian language and a PhD in Hawaiian language to support what is happening in our community, especially in the medium that we’re doing it which is in the very institution where our language was banned from being used as the medium of instruction, and that we have to prove to our people, our families first of all, that we could educate our children successfully and perhaps even better than the mainstream school conducted through English. So this is the main challenge that we were faced, and we were doing this without any funding.
Mathieu: That’s quite impressive. I have a question from a participant: are you seeing the young people introducing new words from modern advancement in technology in Hawaii?
LK: When we first started, we had to do new words with even our babies. How do you say cubby hole? How do you say playhouse and all of these things? Of course, we still had our native speakers with us. So, we worked with our native speakers, but there are some words that as the children grew into what we were doing in the content of this—school education, in chemistry or in physics or in mathematics or in geography—whatever the topics are, new words needed to be created. So, in 1988—actually 1987 is when we established an official kind of lexicon committee to create new Hawaiian words. I’m still the chair of that committee until today. One of the problems, however, is the past three or four years, we haven’t been meeting because we’re doing this all on voluntary basis. We don’t get paid for it. We get free lunch. And of course, we kind of fly between islands so somebody has to pay for that. But that’s all. It’s important. I know there’s going to be criticism about who the heck are these people—are you the academy of the French language of France who create words like they do in France? Well, we don’t have a commission like the Maori people do in New Zealand. That’s one of their responsibilities at the commission. We’ve had several attempts to establish a commission in Hawaii, but to do that at this point, we’re not ready for that because we would be spreading ourselves this way. And we need to continue to keep this pillar strong for now, not putting us all in these big government roles and then let everything else fall apart. We need to stay—the movement at the grassroots level.
Mathieu: Right, so that’s where the priority are—being that’s where you put the priority.
LK: But to answer the question about addressing, creating new words, yes. We have a tremendous gap to catch up on because our modern world has advanced in so many different areas of knowledge and information that we need to have words for.
Mathieu: Right. Well, I’m not seeing any more questions from our participants, but in my own curiosity, I was wondering what that bird was singing in your video. Do you know the bird?
LK: I didn’t hear. The what? The word?
Mathieu: It was a bird that was singing in the background during your video.
LK: [laughs]. Unfortunately, we have many foreign birds so I can’t quite make out what they’re saying. Our native birds are becoming nearly extinct.
Mathieu: Aww…
LK: I’m sure he was chirping happily along with what I was saying, hopefully.
Mathieu: That’s what it was. It was probably happy with your message and just singing along with your message.
LK: Enjoying our beautiful garden.
Mathieu: Yes it is. Beautiful background. With that, thank you very much. We really appreciate you taking the time.
LK: Thank you so much for having this opportunity and good luck on all of your work.
Mathieu: Meegwetch. Thank you. Take care.
LK: Aloha.
Mathieu: Aloha. With that—so that was an awesome presentation. Thank you very much Mr. Kimura for that. With that, we move over to our panel presentation. And our moderator is Julie Dabrusin who is a parliamentary secretary for the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and I will pass the chair onto Julie who will take us through our panel presentation. The floor is all yours, Julie.
Julie Dabrusin (JD): Thank you, Mathieu. Well, I’m really pleased to be here to join you and to be able to moderate this introductory plenary session on indigenous language funding models. I’d like to take a moment to introduce each of the panellists who will be speaking today. The first person who I’m happy to introduce is Mary Jane Norris who is a member of the Algonquins of the Pikwakanagan First Nation. She is a former federal public servant and her research in indigenous languages includes examining the diversity and state of indigenous languages, generational and community perspectives on language maintenance, loss and revitalization, and mapping indigenous languages and their communities across Canada. I’ll also introduce the other two panels before I invite Mary Jane to speak. We also have with us Aluki Kotierk, the incumbent president of the NTI. Aluki is a familiar face as a champion for Inuktitut and has worked in many indigenous organizations and as a deputy minister for several departments within the government of Nunavut. And we are also joined by Marc Leclerc who is a senior advisor and negotiator for the Metis Nation. Marc has over 35 years of experience working with indigenous governments and organizations in areas such as economic development, change management and capacity development. So, I’m really excited to hear from each of you, and if we can begin, I’ll pass over the stage right away to Mary Jane. Please.
Mary Jane Norris (MJN): Kwe-Kwe. Bonjour. Hello to everyone. It’s great to be here and thank you for inviting me. In today’s overview, we’ll be looking at some demographic highlights about the revitalization and maintenance of indigenous languages in Canada. And these highlights reflect findings from an analysis which my co-author, Robert Adcock, and I undertook of census data on indigenous languages. Next slide, please.
Statistics Canada collects data using the term aboriginal. However, we use indigenous in its place when discussing findings here. Linguistic indicators are constructed from census data variables on mother tongue, knowledge and home use, and they provide high insight about the situations of indigenous languages across Canada and help inform priorities in research in relation to language recovery, revitalization and maintenance. The population reporting in an aboriginal language as a mother tongue refers to the first language learned in childhood and still understood today. Aboriginal language speakers are those who can speak an aboriginal language well enough to conduct a conversation as defined in the knowledge variable. Finally, the extent to which an aboriginal language is spoken at home on either a most often or regular basis refers to the two census concepts of home use. These indicators are discussed from three perspectives on language situations. The approach begins with a broad overall view of the state and trends at the national level for languages as a whole. It then moves to a more detailed distinctions-based analysis by indigenous groups and their areas of residence. And this is followed by information about community-level data. Next slide, please.
Linguistic indicators comprise several state of language measures of language vitality and endangerment. Their value lies in their interpretation and to be best understood, they need to be interpreted in combination with each other. Most employ numbers, proportions and average ages of the populations reporting in an aboriginal language in relation mother tongue, ability to speak and home use—home use spoken most often referred here as a main or primary home language, or spoken regularly, expressed here as a secondary language. The indexes of continuity and second language acquisition are constructed as ratios. So, continuity compares the number of people speaking an aboriginal main language at home to the number of people with an aboriginal language mother tongue. Similarly, second language acquisition compares the number of total aboriginal language speakers to the number with an aboriginal mother tongue. Next slide, please.
Yes, so to begin. So, in terms of highlights, to begin, the main highlight in language maintenance is one of long-term decline in the intergenerational transmission of an indigenous mother tongue in Canada. This figure shows the mother tongue population is getting older, with average ages steadily rising from 1986 to 2016. Over this 30-year period, a steady decline in the use of an indigenous main language in the home has contributed to non-transmission and to aging of the mother tongue population. And as we see here, the shares of the children and youth in the mother tongue population have declined from 41% in 1986 to 27% by 2016. Conversely, shares of older adults aged 55 and over have steadily increased. Next slide, please.
Now, to signs of success in language and learning and revitalization, sharply contrasting the decline in mother tongue transmission is the continued increased in indigenous languages being learned as a second language by younger generations. And as shown here, over 1991 to 2016, the increase in the index of second language acquisition point to growth in second-language speakers relative to the mother tongue population. So compared to an aging mother tongue population, second language speakers tend to be younger. According to Stats Can, since 1996, as shown here, the proportion of indigenous language speakers who learned their language as a second language has increased from about 18% to almost 26% in 2016. Next slide, please.
So, growth in home language use is another indicator of revitalization and the most notable trend over 2001 to 2016 is the growth in the number of people using an indigenous language as either a main or secondary language at home. It surpassed the growth rates of the mother tongue and knowledge populations. And most of this increase in home use of an indigenous language was attributable to the significant growth in the number of people speaking the language as a secondary language at home. And despite the decreased transmission of a mother tongue, both time periods represented here show an increase in the number of people speaking an indigenous language owing to the influx of younger second language speakers. Since 2001 when Stats Can started collecting secondary home language data, the population reporting an indigenous language as a second language home has increased markedly at 73% by 2016. Next slide, please.
So, signs for future considerations of language maintenance are the current shifts in patterns of home use. Indigenous languages are now being spoken at home by more people than ever. However, the pattern of use is shifting away from a main towards a secondary home language. As shown here, in 2001 and 2006, about 72% of home users reported speaking their indigenous language as a main language at home, and the other 28% reported it as secondary. Since 2001, this pattern shifted to 60% speaking their language as a main language, and 40% as a secondary. Next slide, please.
Now, moving to a distinction-based analysis by indigenous groups and their areas of residence, a key point is that first nations Inuit and Metis differ significantly in their residential distributions. And this is an important consideration given that the language situations correlate with their areas of residence, faring better in communities located in rural areas and on reserves than in larger urban areas and cities. As shown here, in 2016, the highest proportions of first nations and registered Indian populations reside on reserves, at about 34% and 40% respectively, while about 50% of Inuit reside in rural areas. And Metis and non-status Indians are the most urbanized indigenous groups with about three quarters of their populations living in urban areas, small and large. Next slide, please.
Returning to patterns of home use, we see here significant variations across the four areas of residence. This figure shows home language users in rural communities and on reserves are more likely to report an indigenous language as the main language at home, while those in large urban city areas are more likely to indicate as secondary language. And the use of an indigenous main language at home is highest in rural areas at 70%, and lowest in large cities at only 40%. Next slide, please.
We can also look at patterns of home use by indigenous groups which reflect in part the impact of their residential differences. So, an indigenous home language is more often used as a main language rather than as a secondary among Inuit and First Nations populations, and about equally among the more urbanized Metis. Also, the overall trend that we saw of indigenous home language use was shifting from a main to a secondary language persists for indigenous groups. As shown here, between 2001 and 2006, the main use of an indigenous home language decreased from 70% to 58% for First Nations, from 56% to 50% for Metis, and from 83% to 76% for Inuit. Next slide, please.
An important consideration for all indigenous groups is the contrast between where their total populations live and where their speaker populations live, essentially rural versus large cities. For example, among First Nations people as shown here, three quarters of those reporting an indigenous language mother tongue and 80% of those speaking an indigenous as the main home language live on reserve. Contrast this with just over a third of the total First Nations population residing on reserve. Conversely, compared to 30% of all First Nations people who reside in large cities, corresponding shares of their language populations are much lower, ranging from 6% to 12%. I’d just note here that the mother tongue and main home language populations tend to reside less in larger cities compared to the total speakers and secondary home language populations. Next slide, please.
Now to Metis, the contrast in residential distributions between the Metis total and language populations for rural and large cities are similar to First Nations but less pronounced. And among Metis reporting an indigenous language mother tongue or main home language, disproportionately, higher shares reside in rural areas at 59% and 72% respectively, compared to just 30% of the total Metis population. Like First Nations, a higher proportion of Metis who use their indigenous language as a secondary home language reside in large cities, compared to Metis speaking a main home language. And contrast in residential distributions between the Inuit total and language populations are similar but less pronounced compared to First Nations and Metis. Next slide, please.
Now moving to average ages, the average age of the indigenous language mother tongue population is an indicator of transmission. It’s another measure of how language situations correlate by area of residence. In large cities, the average age of the mother tongue population is much older than that of the total indigenous population, compared to situations on reserves, rural and small urban areas. For example, as we see here, the average age of the First Nations’ population is consistent pretty well across all areas of residence at about 30 years of age. In contrast, First Nations’ mother tongue average ages very significantly by residence. The youngest mother tongue populations are found on reserves; the oldest are in large cities with an age difference of 14 years between the groups total and mother tongue average ages. Now to Inuit. Average age differences between the Inuit total and mother tongue populations are similar than… The average age differences between Inuit total and mother tongue populations are smaller than those of First Nations and Metis across all areas. Like other indigenous groups, the gap in total and mother tongue average ages among Inuit was greatest in large cities compared to rural and small urban areas. However, the erosion… I think—next slide, please. I’m sorry. That should be… Yeah, thank you.
So here, like First Nations and Metis, the gap in average ages between mother tongue and total is greatest in the large cities. However, the erosion in mother tongue transmission in large cities is much less pronounced for Inuit given that their shorter period of urbanization. Next slide, please. Yes, thank you.
This analysis points to indigenous languages in large cities as a growing priority with respect to language programs, particularly for youth. As indigenous populations become more urbanized, language erosion could accelerate given the challenges of language maintenance and acquisition among families and children in cities. And this could be also a particularly critical time for the maintenance of Inuit languages in urban areas given the implications of increasing urbanization. In assessing the implications of urbanization for Inuit languages, Marika Morris noted, and I quote, “Language skills of individual Inuit are being eroded and this is likely to continue by generation and with the trend toward urbanization.” Furthermore, researchers noted that an Inuit language program in Ottawa and I quote, “is operating in a larger policy environment in which funding and program directives for indigenous language maintenance and promotion are virtually absent.” Next slide, please.
So, turning to language in community-specific situations, with respect to linguistic indicators, a language in community-specific perspective is critical for assessment and understanding of an indigenous language’s situation. While indigenous languages vary in their status from one language to another, it is important to note that the language situations of same language communities also differ significantly from one community to another. And so, community-level language data for indigenous languages and linguistic indicators are available online at the NRI website and they comprise a set of about 90 languages over four censuses with detailed data for around 1,000 indigenous communities and the four language variables. Next slide, please.
For reference, here’s a screenshot of the website and it shows the menu of reference tables which includes summary tables at the national level and community-level language tables. And the compiled data are available on the website as downloadable Excel spreadsheets. Ten seconds. So, in closing… Next slide, please.
I would like to acknowledge the support of Canadian Heritage in making this research possible and to everyone for being here today. Meegwetch. Merci. Thank you.
JD: Thank you, Mary Jane. That was a really great way to start this conversation with a lot of information, particularly, for me listening from Toronto, a big urban area. That was really interesting so thank you. Now looking forward to hearing Aluki present. If I can please pass the floor to you.
Aluki Kotierk (AK): [Translated from Inuktut: I envision a time where as Inuit, in our own homelands where we are the public majority, where Inuktitut is the majority language, we are able to freely and with dignity use Inuktitut in all aspects of our lives with the expectation of receiving public essential services in Inuktitut.] I envision in a time where as Inuit, in our own homelands where we are the public majority, where Inuktitut is the majority language, we are able to freely and with dignity use Inuktitut in all aspects of our lives with the expectation of receiving public essential services in Inuktitut. Wow. Doesn’t that sound like a good vision? Unfortunately, even though Inuit may have 85% of Nunavut’s population, and Inuktitut is the public majority language used, Inuit cannot expect to receive essential public services in Inuktitut. This is truly a public safety concern that all levels of government need to be aware of and need to address. In fact, just last week, there was a social media post floating around in our communities expressing outrage because a unilingual Inuktitut speaking elder had travelled to our territory’s capital with a young toddler. Upon arrival to the airport, they called the patient’s boarding home to ask for a pick-up. The person who answered the phone was unable to speak and understand Inuktitut. Without getting into the attitude of the person on the other end of the phone, the result was that the elder proceeded to start walking from the airport to the boarding home with a small toddler in tow in mid winter. Think about how undignified it must have felt for the unilingual Inuktitut speaking elder who cannot function and meet basic needs in their day-to-day life because they are unable to speak French; they are unable to speak English in their own homeland to boot! It is crucial that we are clear-minded about what our aspirations are in terms of language. What is our expectation? What do we envision? We must keep this outcome the goal front and centre in our minds as we get busy, and we will continue to be busy. Absolutely everything else that we get so busy on—the committees, the working groups, the conferences—all are tools to achieve that aspiration. We must ensure that our business contributes to the building blocks towards our language vision. These building blocks include teacher education programs, developing curriculum, resources and materials all to support and achieve our goals. Funding models are tools; they are a means to an end. How are we going to achieve our goals? We know that the federal government already knows exactly how to effectively deliver on the necessary funding for languages as they do that for federally recognized minority languages. We know it cannot be project-based. We know it needs to be comprehensive. We know it needs to be sustainable. Legislations are tools. On February 5th 2019, when Minister Rodriguez introduced Bill C-91, I stood in the open space watching him at the press conference. My body was seething. My body was seething because it felt like a very personal failure on my part that I had not been able to articulate effectively not only the aspiration that we had as Inuit, but the necessity. I failed in helping the federal government understand that Inuit want to live with dignity in their own homeland. The first sentence of the special supplement of the Inuktitut magazine published in May 1976 states, “Inuit Taparisat ; the Eskimo brotherhood was launched in August 1971 to represent the Inuit people in their resolve to preserve and promote the Inuit language and culture in the midst of change and pressures of progress.” My body was seething because I knew that Canada values two colonial languages over Inuktut even though Inuktut is the public majority language of Nunavut. In the 2016 census, mother tongue speakers are recorded. For Nunavut, there is a heading that says, “Official Languages”; 11,020 English; 595 French. When you go further down, there’s another heading that says “Non-Official Languages” and you look down that list, it states 22,600 Inuit languages. My body was seething because I knew that section 10.1 of the Indigenous Languages Act states, “A federal institution or its agent or mandatary may, in according with the regulations, provide access to services in an indigenous language, if the institution or its agent or mandatary has the capacity to do so and there is sufficient demand for access to those services in that language.” In comparison, section 22 of the Official Languages Act of Canada states, “Every federal—and I’m going to clarify… section 22(b)—“Every federal institution has the duty to ensure that any member of the public can communicate with and obtain available services from its head or central office in either official language and has the same duty with respect to any of its other offices or facilities in Canada or elsewhere where there is significant demand for communications with and services from that office or facility in that language.” My body was seething because I knew that the late Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in 1966 is quoted as saying a year before the first volume of the report of the Royal Commission on bilingualism and biculturalism was published, and I quote, “In a diverse federal state such as Canada, it is important that all citizens should have a fair and equal opportunity to participate in the national administration and to identify themselves with and feel at home in their own national capital.” I wondered why and how Inuit do not feel at home in their own territorial capital. How come Inuit don’t feel at home? The really good thing about all this is that I was born in Inuk. Although I knew my body was seething, despite my frustrations on this path to advocate for and support and strengthen Inuktitut, I take great solace and arrive at great peace with the strongly held knowledge that even if I am unable to effect positive and proactive change and support for Inuktitut during my earthly existence, that there will be other Inuit that carry my name and will advocate more effectively, more boldly, more articulately so that one day, we will have a time where Inuit can actually live with dignity in their own homeland. My namesakes will see this become a reality. This gives me great comfort. It gives me great assuredness. It grounds me when everything around me become chaotic and we spend busyness talking about funding models and regulations and legislations and policies that do not go far enough. I remind myself to focus on the big language aspiration that we have and work within the current compliance of legislation that does not yet go far enough. In fact, over the years looking at the proposed language for legislation, even thinking broadly about potential funding models, I sometimes think, “Would this be acceptable for Canadian French speakers?” Maybe one day, as Inuit in our own homelands, we can begin to expect the overexuberant demonstration of support for Inuktitut similar to the way in which the 595 French speakers in Nunavut are supported. Most recently, on November 9, 2020, the federal government committed $10,769,000 to expand the French school. Minister Joly stated, “All Canadians have the right to a quality education in their first and second languages regardless of the community to which they belong.” The unsaid part of that statement implied to us Inuit that this is so only if you are a French speaker or an English speaker. It doesn’t matter that as Inuit, we are the public majority in our homeland and both these languages are minorities. Inuit are practical dreamers. Dreamers because we have big audacious language dreams. Practical because we work hard with whatever parameters are thrown at us to continue towards building our dream. Each time we are utter words in our language, it is an act of self-determination. We assert our rights to self-determination. [Greetings and thanks in Inuktut]. Thank you.
JD: Thank you very much, Aluki, and thank you for speaking so eloquently and forcefully. We appreciated what you had to say so thank you for that. We’re now going to go to Marc for his presentation. I’ll pass it over to you.
Marc Leclerc (ML): Okay, well. Tawnshi. Marcii. I want to thank the elders for their stories this afternoon. I want to thank Mary Jane for her presentation on data. I found that very fascinating. And Aluki, what can I say? You know, we, as the Metis Nation, support the Inuit’s desire to have public services in Inuktitut language. And I don’t think that fight is over. We’ve agreed with ITK and AFN to continue to pursue additional resources to support language preservation and will continue that fight with you. Of course, we wouldn’t be here if the Prime Minister and his Minister Joly in 2015 didn’t make certain commitments to preserve and promote indigenous languages. It started in the liberal platform commitment 168 exactly, and we moved on from there to agree to develop legislation. We made it clear from the beginning that we wouldn’t support the legislation unless there was a funding package and we saw the funding package as far as it goes in the 2019 budget. I’m just going to go to my second slide. So, these were historic investments judged against the funds that were allocated by previous governments in the past. Of course, we’re five years into this program and we’re still under the just trying to shed ourselves of the old funding model which we’re working through while we have these long-term commitments—particularly the $115 million commitment going forward annually. We’re still subject to the Treasury Board rules and guidelines. We’re going through system transformation and it’s taking a little longer than at least we would like. Now under the legislation, they’re supposed to include agreements and arrangements. We’re going to come on to talk about our arrangement that we’re proposing. Next slide, please.
And critical to this new funding proposal is to go on a distinctions-based approach which the Inuit and First Nations agree with. So that kind of moved some of the barnacles out of the way, but now we need to move with the government to transform the system and I’m pleased to say that Charles and Paul who spoke earlier are really helping to move the process along. Next slide, please.
The reason why we’re not very pleased with the current funding model is because quite frankly, it failed for us. We only received about 2.25% of the resources in 2018. It improved by last year but that’s in part because we put in place a new review committee which included Metis representatives that were reviewing the proposals. Next slide, please. And then one more.
So, we undertook internal consultations and not surprisingly, we agreed that the current model needs to be replaced. It needs to be on a nation-to-nation basis. The funding model should be distinctions-based. It should be recognition and we didn’t want to be in a position where we’re competing with First Nations and Inuit. We think that there should be notional allocations to the three peoples. We have a very population—indigenous population—where 25% of the indigenous population were roughly about 400,000. That makes us the largest indigenous nation in almost North America. We’re spread through a very large territory. And so when you’re trying to revitalize the language, you’re talking about trying to get at least some of the people—some of those 400,000—to learn the language.
It’s a big job and part of the difficulty—next slide, please—is the language is so challenged that we have very few speakers. My family speaks it; I don’t. But my cousin Normand with GDI is the lead teacher of the language and he’s developed the dictionary. But because we have an endangered language, we require increased investments and we’ve got a large population and we came up with a funding model. Our funding model, not unlike the ITK’s, was expensive because getting this job done is not easy. It requires capacity building. It requires building the roster speakers; that’s not as challenging in Inuktitut but it is in Michif and in other Indigenous languages. But we agreed it shouldn’t be project-based. Building these languages will take a number of years. We heard from the Hawaiian speaker this morning they’ve been doing it on voluntary basis for a couple of decades. And it does take time. Next slide, please. What we had said on… One more slide, please.
We’ve been trying to develop tools to support our languages for decades. And Gabriel Dumont Institute in Saskatchewan, Louis Riel Institute in Manitoba have been big players in promoting our languages. So, we want to build upon some of the best practices they’ve established. They’ve established some curriculums. Some of our communities have established curriculum, up in Pinehouse and other places. So, we want to build on these new models and we want to learn from others. Next slide, please.
Okay. So, what approach does the Metis Nation want to take? In 2017, we entered a new era with the Government of Canada—entering into a Canada-Metis Nation Accord. The accord is the cornerstone of our relationship with the Government of Canada. Through this accord in the permanent bilateral process with the Prime Minister, we have developed historic investments in the Metis people. These accords… I’m just going to go two more. I had somebody help me prepare these slides and they changed some of them on me. So that’s Celeste and Wei. So, these ten-year accords in housing, early learning and childcare, homelessness, postsecondary education assistance for our children, recommitment to employment and training have been huge investments counting for some $2 billion over a ten-year period. This really helped turn the corner for the Metis Nation. The Supreme Court of Canada not long ago had said that the Metis are within section 91(24) of the Constitution, and this government paid attention to it. We’ve been negotiating on a co-development basis all of these new investments. The language accord—and what this had led to is ten-year sub-accords in all of those areas that I mentioned. Ten years because we’re learning from what happened in Kelowna, where we had a commitment by then Prime Minister Martin for some $5 billion that the next government came in and said it was written on the back of a napkin and they tossed it. So, what we agreed with the Government of Canada is to put in ten-year legally binding accords so that any change in government would not change the funding in all of those areas. Now the language process was not within that permanent bilateral process. It was on its own stream. But we are now proposing and have tabled a draft with the Government of Canada a ten-year accord on languages so that we can commit the money. We know there are some transitional issues with the Treasury Board submission and when Cabinet looks at it again—but we’re hoping that within the permanent bilateral process to sign ten-year accords on languages so that we can get to work doing the things that we need to get done. With that, Mathieu, I’ve got it done in ten minutes. I know you’re running a little over time—or Mathieu and Julie. So just come to the back of this again and say how grateful we are, Parliamentary Secretary, for the leadership that your government has shown. I know we have a lot more to do and in the language areas, we’ll need to look long-term at the sufficiency of funding. We need to support our indigenous brothers in the Arctic, and we believe that public services in Inuktitut for the Inuit is a necessary requirement. And so, I’ll just end it there and thank you for taking the time to listen to me.
JD: Wonderful. Thank you so much for that and thank you for highlighting the importance about long-term reliable streams of funding as part of that as well. So, I appreciate that. We’re now going to be moving to some questions. So, panellists, I will be asking questions. Maybe if you want to indicate which one of you wants to jump in more, or else I’ll call some names. So the first question in fact was “Can Mary Jane please address key issues with census data, how the data is often not reliable due to a lack of uptake among census for indigenous communities?” That question—if Mary Jane you can please jump in on that. I’m just—she’s asking for one moment. This is the joys of technology and trying to work things through… If you’d prefer, what I can do is also jump a next question. Mary Jane, are you ready to jump in? Perfect.
MJN: There are different aspects but I guess if we’re talking about the term is incomplete enumeration, I think—and this is just very generally speaking—that has been less of an issue. It still is there. For example, it’s more pronounced across censuses. That aspect is—when we look at it over time, we take those into account. But I think that overall, we’re still able to work quite well with the data. That would be my overall sense. No data are perfect and I think we’re really fortunate in the data that we do have. It does allow us to go to the community level and yes, there are some communities for which we don’t have data, but all to say is that if you look at it over time and you have to—you take into account that some languages won’t be as well documented, but nevertheless I think it’s—when I look at other countries, for example, we really are—we’re very fortunate in the kind of language data that we have and that we can derive so much from it in terms of second language. The question is not directly about second-language speakers, but you derive it from the people who can speak it against the people who have it as a mother tongue. So, it tells a story and I recognize, certainly, I’ve worked extensively with the data but just to say is—it nevertheless tells us a lot and I do recognize that, but I would say that it’s not as—the 2011 NHS was more of a challenge but nevertheless, overall, I’d say that certainly it’s a valuable data source.
JD: Alright, well thank you for that. I believe we’re going to have time for one more question. Maybe it’s my chance to put Aluki and Marc on the hot seat now that Mary Jane passed that question. It was interesting in hearing your presentations when we were talking about—one of the questions was flexibility in funding is a must and as a broad variety of approaches will taken from language to language and from community to community, given this diversity of need, what kinds of criteria should be considered in allocating funding? I think both of you kind of touched a bit on this but maybe if you want to jump in more on the criteria question. I can’t see Marc on my screen so maybe if I can jump to Aluki first.
AK: In terms of funding criteria, I think the best approach that the federal government can take to ensure that Inuktitut continues to thrive is to look at the model they used to support minority official languages of Canada. I made a point that the 595 French speakers in Nunavut just recently were committed more than $10 million for the French school, which is federally funded within our territory even though the public majority speak Inuktitut at home and the school system, for the most part, is in English. So the criteria in the context of Nunavut is that Inuktitut needs to be supported in all aspects of our lives. It cannot be based on only whether or not the federal institution has the capacity, similar to the way in which French language speakers expect that if there’s a demand, that the federal institution will pony up and get the capacity. As Inuit, we expect the same in our own homelands to be able to receive essential public services in Inuktitut. So the criteria is multifaceted and I think ultimately, the goal is what needs to be focused on and it shouldn’t be a matter of ticking off boxes and seeing if it’s met a criteria. The outcome is what needs to be the focus.
JD: Thank you for that. Maybe… Marc, did you have something to add about criteria for developing flexible funding models for different communities?
ML: As I indicated, we’d like to move to a distinctions-based allocation. For the Metis community itself, based on and informed by best practices, whether it’s Hawaii, the Mari—really it should be for the community to determine what is the best practices. I’m not going to tell the Inuit how to preserve their language. They might have something that works for them but doesn’t work for us. But the key is to get away from the proposal driven—filling in all the boxes. It never worked on time so we want a long-term sustainable approach and we think that the addition of the commissioner does help us inform what the practices should be. So going forward, there’s a significant financial commitment to the office of the commissioner. We think that’s a long-term institutional approach that can help all of us, but we don’t want them to be doing the funding or approving the funding of this. I think—we’re the Metis Nation; we have some very good professionals, we have a lot of educators. We’ll leave it up to the experts to determine the eligibility criteria, but by distinctions-based.
JD: Thank you. I want to thank all three of our panellists because that was really interesting and passionate and I really, really appreciated hearing your insights. I’m sure that everyone listening did, too. So, thank you for that and all of the hard work that you put into this issue of preserving and revitalizing and supporting indigenous languages. I’m going to give a shout out to some other people because no one sees them, but there’s a tech team that is doing amazing work in the background to keep us all flowing out and they’re about to pull us all off the screen. But I do want to thank them before I hand it over to Mathieu. So, Mathieu, you have the floor again.
Mathieu: Thank you, Parliamentary Secretary. Thank you very much to the panellists for providing their oversight. I’m sure the participants have been taking notes like crazy in terms of everything that being said.
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