Video — Indigenous Languages Symposium — January 28, 2021
Transcript of Indigenous Languages Symposium — Morning session, January 28, 2021
Length: 1:08:14
Mathieu Courchene (MC) - I'd like to introduce Professor Rawinia, Rawinia Higgins from New Zealand Maori Languages Commission. I believe she's going to start with a quick video and following that she'll come say a few words and then I'll open the floor for questions. So, Professor Higgins, we'll start with your video. Thank you.
Rawinia Higgins (RH) – [Greetings in Maori] It is my privilege to be able to present this morning's keynote address to all at the Indigenous Languages Symposium, building on the strengths and successes. My name is Professor Rawinia Higgins. I am the chairperson and commissioner for the Modern Language Commission Te Taura Whiri i Te Reo Maori, and I'm also the deputy vice chancellor Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. It is my privilege to be able to talk to you about how we have built our modern language revitalization program here in Aotearoa New Zealand. So about strengths and weaknesses, about some of the challenges and how we've managed to overcome them, and just an overview of what we have been doing since 1987 with the creation of the Modern Language Commission and where we are today and how that significantly changed when we decided to invest in an adoption of actual programs that focus on language planning and policy to help inform what we do and the work that we collectively do as Maori. Both the responsibilities of Maori themselves, but also for the Crown. So just a bit of background, I purposely chose this picture as my background because I'm going to talk about Te Whare o Te Reo Mauriora, which means, literally means, the House of the Living Language and this is one of our traditional houses here at the university that I work at, at Te Heranga Waka, at the school Te Heranga Waka, that is around bringing people together. So, it is a real privilege to be able to talk to you today and as we join our canoes together to be able to share our stories with you, albeit virtually. But hopefully, you know, as COVID dies down, we hope that people will be able to come and visit us in Aotearoa New Zealand. So, I'm just going to share my screen just to talk about and focus my conversation today so Te Whare Te Reo Mauriora, I'm going to talk about Aotearoa New Zealand's experience. We have, as I said, and I like this photo because it represents both our past journey, but also some of our more recent events. Now this is a montage of historical photographs, and some of them have some dates on them, more specifically, the 1972 petition for the language but interspersed were these photographs, particularly the older photographs where see a lot of protests [Inaudible speech due to connection issue] which we have dispersed them with our more recent events, which is around celebrations and how we take the notion of protesting and marching to a different kind of perspective of where we're celebrating our language today. So, as I said, the road for language revitalization and the rights from which very much started as a protest, protest by our people who wanted to ensure that the language was taught in our schools. And in 1972, more specifically, we had the Maori Language petition. Now this petition was driven by university students of the time, many of whom were not language speakers, but were wanting to reclaim a part of the heritage within this country and so gathered enough signatories and, as I said, in 1972 presented those to Parliament. Now, at the same time just after that, particularly in the 1979 to 1982, we have a number of community-driven initiatives that emerged, including the Kohanga Reo movement, which is the language nests, and many other indigenous peoples have taken this model and incorporate it into their language planning strategies. Te Ataarangi, which is using the Cuisenaire Rods to teach adults how to speak Te Reo Maori, often called the silent method. They also had the introduction of a bilingual school which is in Ruatoki, which is actually where my people come from, which is in the eastern Bay of Plenty. Now, these community driven initiatives were organically emerging from our people, so they were driven by our people, they were driven by particularly our elders who decided that they wanted to create a change. And consequently, as time moves on, a number of these community grassroot initiatives became institutionalized and I'm going to talk about that a little bit later, but they started as movements by our people and then later became institutions, and often in their transition from the movement to an institution, which was governed by a crown or by a government agency through funding, it starts to lose a lot of the self-determination factor, which a number of our initiatives have struggled with. Suffice to say, in 1985, the Waitangi Tribunal, it's like our Truth and Reconciliation group, their claim was launched, it's the first generic claim put on by all tribes, because often they're just by particular specific tribes, WAI 11 is the Te Reo Maori claim, Maori language claim. In the tribunal at the time, in their findings and their recommendations recognized that our language was indeed a taonga or a treasure under Article Two of the Treaty of Waitangi. And consequently, their recommendations encouraged the government, albeit in a non-binding way. However, the government in 1987 created the Maori Language Act, and the key parts to this piece of legislation was the Te Reo Maori, our language, was to be made an official language of Aotaeroa New Zealand. There was a... we could use the language in courts, it also established Te Taura Whiri i Te Reo Maori or the Maori Language Commission, and it also enabled the commission to issue translation and interpreters licences. So the scope of the legislation was relatively limited, these were the main parts of the legislation, and I think at the time our people saw this as a major coup in our political history and the expectation from our people, who particularly had been working in these movements, that the commission would ramp up all efforts and be able to resource all the community efforts to be able to drive language revitalization, make it official... as an official language, there was an expectation that it would be made compulsory in schools and of course, this is not the case. So, at the time, highly celebrated, the establishment of the commission was important, but just to give an overview of both the role of the commission and its establishment years, it's important to understand from a legal perspective that the language commission is an independent crown entity. Therefore, it has a bit of an arms length from government, so it's not a direct ministry of our government, but... and it's governed by a board of commissioners, and today I'm the chairperson of their board. So consequently, it doesn't receive direct funding from a minister, however, a minister sets up an opportunity for the commission to work in coordination with the ministry. At the time of the establishment, it was a relatively unknown entity, and so there was a lot of support from government because they didn't really know what they were creating or what they were doing with us. And of course, that was led by Sir Timoti Karetu, who was recognized as... like the godfather of modern language in this country. And so widely respected leader, able to shape the strategy for modern language revitalization, and at the time, but in the context of where we were as a country, he chose to focus on the development of corpus, creating a lots of dictionaries, particularly those, particularly to deal with an modernity because we had, we wanted... he wanted the language to be able to be useful, particularly across the broader public sector, but also for the country. So, creating language that was relevant to workplaces, to technologies, to curriculum and the like. And so, they dedicate a lot of resources in time to create dictionaries. He also committed to the creation of what is known in this country as Kura Reo, or their intensive one-week language programs. And he saw a need to provide professional development for our teachers, and teachers and schools so that they would be better at teaching our children Te Reo Maori. These weeklong, intensive programs are still running today, they have slightly changed, but he is still a feature of many of these Kura Reo, and it's less about supporting teachers, although a number of teachers do attend Kura Reo, but it has been about refining and helping to provide professional development for those who are wanting to upskill in the language. And of course, they would need it to be a mechanism to be able to register and licence translators and interpreters for the court system, but also for tribunals and for parliament and general. So, a lot of work in the establishment years is to try and put something together as a strategy that would be supportive on relatively modest funding. However, over time, as the commission grew and there were changes in the different commissioners, there started to be a shift in the focus of the commission, so the... the desire to be able to influence and inform policy and influence the role of the Ministry for Maori development, more specifically, became a big part of where the commission in general was wanting to focus so they would develop standards, orthographic standards for government departments, but also set standards on how the use of our language was being portrayed, but also used in official ceremonies, but also documents related to the government. The commission also became the source of community funding to support Maori Language initiatives and more specifically Ma Te Reo. So, community groups could apply to the commission to be able to run different events or attend some learning programmes, but community driven programs primarily, to support language revitalization initiatives and of course, Maori Language Week as... became a big key feature on the calendar for the commission, as were the Maori Language Awards too, be able to recognize those who put on the effort to support Maori Language Week, but more broadly, to support the language across the year. So one of the challenges that has happened in the past is the way in which governments changed, politics shift, more specifically, the Ma Te Reo fund, or the community funding started to become the primary role of the commission and became, they became less of a focus around creation of language or standards, but more becoming a funding agency, that often challenged communities and their expectations or didn't meet their expectations of what community were hoping from these funds. And so, as I said, political landscapes in this country changed quite significantly, particularly as we have more and more Treaty of Waitangi settlements that become enacted, tribes are becoming more self-determining on the back of these settlements. We also had the creation of the Maori Party, and they entered parliament, and the current leader becomes the minister for Maori Development. And well then, you know, the bureaucracy, the machine of government, we have these tensions between the Commission, Te Puni Kokiri or the Ministry for Money Development and also our communities, who are annoyed that there is a lack of coordination between those supporting language initiatives. The community's desire to take control and have a level of self-determination on what activities are relevant for them. So, effectiveness and efficiencies are being challenged, and so the Minister for Maori Development, he decides to undertake a national review of the Modern Language spend, and the report, Te Reo Mauriora report, which means the Living Language report was released in 2011. One of the key findings was that they saw that over 250 million dollars was being spent on Maori Language Initiatives and on assets there, because the council sent disclaimers because it also counted assets such as school properties and the like. So, when the report came out, it looked like a very large amount of money was being spent on the language but actually, the way the government presented this, probably wasn't taking into account – or was transparent about – it’s being included in the total spend. But one of the main things that the panel came up with was the desire and the need to focus on language in the homes. Most of the resourcing that went to modern language initiatives have primarily been at a macro level and focussed on schools and broadcasting and very little to actually drive community development. Now, if you recall, I talked about, you know, some of the organic initiatives created by our communities that have become some of the most successful. Those were there to support language in the home, whereas we were focussing on what could be easily measured, i.e., through schools, through broadcasting and the like, so our people during this review wanted a return so that. The commission was giving out community funding, but much based on, at the time, the view of what could be what would fit in the bureaucracy in terms of what would be counted as an output or not. So that minister decided to amend the Modern Language Act of 1987; he commences it and sends out, sends it out for national consultation. Consequently, the people rejected it because it wasn't actually fixing that issue or allowing the commission or the community voice to have a stronger... to have the levers needed to make significant changes. By the time he retires, the legislation hasn't gone through, and a new minister for Maori Development from his political party enters into this parliament, recognizes the response to, to the amendments and appoints an independent advisory group to review the Maori Language Amendment Bill. So, I was appointed as the chairperson of that group alongside other representatives from both community and iwi or our tribal groups, but also well known experts and language planning and policy. And so I had the privilege of being able to chair that review and rewrote the report that had about 20 recommendations and on how to change the legislation to give better effect to that. And thus, these amendments were supported by the minister and have become the foundation of the Modern Language Act 2016. So essentially in our report, Te Whare o Te Reo Mauriora, we use this as an analogy, so as you can see in this image that’s reflective of the house behind me. In our review, what we did is we took the language planning and policy approach to how we felt we could address the issues that had been raised by our communities. We separated out micro language planning from macro language training and then allotted them to be the responsibility of either Maori or the Crown. Now, in order to create a house like this, all the components need to rely on each other, so this was an approach just to get our feet to the Treaty of Waitangi partnership. Firstly, to be able to have Maori and the crown in the room together who are represented in this house, Maori representing the micro planning approach, aid for homes, for their Whānau, for their families, all the subtribes, all their tribes; and the crown to deal with the macro societal level approaches such as education, broadcasting rather than what had been happening. We've got piecemeal of people not working collectively but working in solos and consequently in competition with each other. So the design of Te Whare o Te Reo Mauriora relies on two strategies, one is called the Malhi Maori, and that bargepole we can say the word MAORI represents a bare strategy and they are lead by Te Matawai and so you can see the representative groups. So we have in our small country, we have seven regions and in those regions, which is essentially our canoe confederation regions, we have seven regions that represent our tribal groups. We also have four groups, four representatives there.... are more representative of initiatives. So for example, we have one for community groups and so that captures people like the Maori Women's Welfare League, Maori Council, Te Ataarangi which is a group that's one of the organic Maori Language initiatives, broadcasting because we have 21 iwi tribal radio stations who don't quite fit under the crown, they are and funded by the crown but that's why they're put in there. Education, so all the immersion education groups such as the Kohanga Reo the language nest admission school in primary and secondary all the way through to Tertiary. We have a representative for everybody who are dispossessed from their tribes, and then there are two ministerial appointments, and they look after they Maori Strategy or the Malhi Maori, the Malhi, again, is the bargepole. And then the Malhi Karauna is made out of these crown agencies, including the Maori Language Commission, who has the role of leading the implementation of the Malhi Karauna, which is represented on that other pole. Now, one of the interesting parts of this, of this analogy of using a house is that our architecture and our house is on the side that is the Maori side, and you can probably just see it behind me this way. It's got a smaller wall, next to the door, I'm backwards. So, there's the door and then on the side it has a very large side, and so it kind of fits quite nicely with micro and macro language planning. And so it fits in that kind of way and as you can see on the screen, the Malhi Maori Kia vision is KIA UKAIPO ANO TE REO, which is me... which means that Te Reo Maori is restored as the nurturing first language. So Ukaipo is when you nurse your child at the breast, and that was to try and keep remind us in that in that vision we want to restore the languages, our language and our homes. And then they had quite a number of outcomes and audacious goals that we share together collectively as a whole house. So, the idea is that the focus for the Te Matawi is around families, homes and communities compared to us as the Crown, the Malhi Karauna. Our desire is to ensure the language is spread as far and as wide as possible. So ours is [Maori language] so that everybody is touched by the language or is encouraged to use the language. Collectively, we share some audacious goals, which is that by 2040 we will get a million speakers of the language and that's broadly across the whole country. We're also aiming to have at least a hundred and fifty thousand Maori speaking Te Reo Maori as their primary language by 2040. Now these, we know that we are a long way off from this, but we feel like some of the things that we have managed to achieve in the short amount of time is giving us a good indication. We have more and more people embracing Te Reo Maori within our public sector, but also, you know, society as a whole. And part of this has been through having now a new sense of direction of what our role is as Crown agencies compared to how do we support our communities, and also having the platforms and the right levers to have the conversations with each other. So, whereas I, as the commissioner, represent the Crown, the mighty Malhi Karauna for language revitalization, I don't work on my own I'm always going to think about what is the impact on our communities and working alongside the co-chairs of Te Matawai as we see it priorities and each coming years. So now to Te Matawi has taken responsibility for community initiatives. They have set up a tribal electoral system in which they set their own strategies for their own regions, all the groups that they represent, and they determine what's needed. One of the most inspiring things for me, who has been part of the creation of this house, is being able to see actual self-determination play out in front of everybody when they can choose what is the priority to support language in the homes, and also from a ground perspective, being able to work out, "Ok, what are the societal needs that we need to try and shift people into valuing the language enough so that they want to be part of this movement?" so, of course, 2020 was a an unusual year, unprecedented year, and so we were in lockdown for a part of the year like many others. And so, we're here to think about how we were going to adapt to a new environment and try and encourage people to be part of our Maori Language Week. Our team came up with the idea of this.
Video: In 1972, 30,000 signatures were delivered to parliament to safeguard Te Reo Maori. This year, on the same day and same hour, we invite you from wherever you like to join our Maori Language Moment, one million of us celebrating Te Reo Maori together. Join us.
RH: So that was just a wee clip of what we did last year, which was we got people to register for the Maori Language Moment at that time. As you saw in the video now, we were uncertain as to whether we would meet the one-million target, and we saw it as a good litmus test in this country to see how many people really did care about the language, even if it was just for one moment as part of Maori Language Week. We got over one million registrations, it actually broke our system in the lead up just before the 12 o'clock deadline, but when we managed to get things back online again, we had reached it. So, for me, as the commissioner, I'm really interested to see how do you convert passion for a moment into a long term language strategy? And our team has been looking at ways of thinking about Maori Language Week as more than just a week, but also how you take those moments to be little moments every day to help shift people along the trajectory to becoming Maori language speakers. Now it takes a multi-faceted approach, but I feel like really optimistic around just the level of enthusiasm and support that we've had as a nation more generally and the adoption of our language to define who we are as a nation, particularly in the world, but also that recognition and awareness by our country that Te Reo Maori is the official language of this country. First and foremost, it is one of the officials, it's the first official language to be made official by legislation, English is the language “du jour” in this country, but also, it's also the first language of our country. So, I'm really proud to see how we have evolved from protesting to celebrating the indigenous language of this country, and I am optimistic that by 2040, we will get our one million speakers and part of it requires everybody in Aoteaora and beyond to embrace our language. So nō reira, thank you for having me and I get that this is pre-recorded, and I look forward to hearing a conversation shortly. [Greetings in Maori]
MC: Thank you very much for that presentation, Professor Higgins. I think you are actually going to join us live for perhaps one question, I think we have time for probably one question in terms of your presentation. I guess our reality here in Canada is a little different. I mean, you have one... I don't know about the dialects of the Maori language within New Zealand, but here we have like 50 some languages across the country. I guess those are what brings together with the other challenges, I guess, for our commissioner, I'm guess I'm thinking about how would you measure success? Like I'm guessing within the Maori you have a group perhaps of different dialects, here we have 50 some languages, some with different levels of fluency, also, some are threatened. So, I guess I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on measuring success and how would you measure success?
RH: Good morning, thank you for the question. I think one of the things, even though we do have one main language that we all understand. One of the things that we've noticed more predominantly now is the need to reclaim our individual dialects and so building on our own individual languages because a lot of them are more distinctive than we take for granted and part of the challenge for commissions when they're setting standards is that often they can homogenize our languages. And so more recently, with the development of focussing on micro and macro language planning has allowed us to enable tribes to embrace and drive the language strategies that are relevant to them and more specifically, their dialectal reclamation. And for the commission to, to work out how we support it at a societal level and embracing that. So that can be influencing local government to embrace the languages and the dialects of those particular tribes within their regions, rather than trying to determine "this is the one and only language for this country. "So I think where we've come to at this stage is the focus on language planning, and thinking about that for what is important to our tribes in our communities and supporting those initiatives for self-determination, and then what is the role of the commission to support that at a societal level to be able to embrace that rather than trying to homogenize us all.
MC: Another question that I have is curious, if you have to start all over, because here we are in Canada, just starting off, in terms of setting up a commission and setting up on the responsibility as the commissioners, if there's any lessons that you could share with our participants in terms of if you had the opportunity to start again from scratch. What are the lessons learnt and what would you share with us?
RH: I suppose being able to create this new framework that really sets our policy framework for the whole country has in many ways has allowed us to start from the beginning again, and then from what we had in our previous legislation and what didn't actually work for us, the focus on language in the home, because I think one of the things that we often take for granted is language revitalization is a three generational approach, it's a strategy that takes three generations to restore, even though it only takes one generation to lose. We are relatively at generation two, we still have a long way to go, and this is a long game, it's not a short game. We try to make it a short game on our national commission, but then realized that actually, if the language is not in the home and within families and passed on through those generations, it makes it really, really hard to get buy-in from people. And I think as we continue to develop, we will so learn from our new framework, but we've managed to put on better leaders within the legislation that allows community voice to be heard and not just continually overwhelmed by crown policy.
MC: I do have a question from a participant that it's around the need of supporting language teachers and what kind of supports in terms of policy programs were you able to put in place to... for training language teachers?
RH: More and more Tertiary institutions are providing teacher training that has a keen focus on language revitalization. Just last year, the Minister for Maori... the Minister for Education and Crown Maori relationships introduced a teacher training program, professional development program for non-Maori language speakers to help influence or to support them to be better in the mainstream schools. So, he has a commitment to supporting immersion schooling, but also has made a commitment to investing in teacher training or upskilling teachers in the mainstream on being better. It's some real fundamentals, even just pronunciation, some very basic skills because of a number of our children, they turn up to school and their name is mangled by the teacher, and it often just turns them off. And just getting some fundamentals right across the whole education system has been part of his drive as the Associate Minister for Education.
MC: I do want to thank you for your time, Professor Higgins. We are out of time; I just want to alert you that you are on the wrong side of the road.
RH: Oh, I'm on the right side of the road.
MC: Appreciate it, thank you very much for your time, Professor Higgins, and enjoy your ride back too. Enjoy your day.
RH: Thank you very much. Thank you.
MC: Take care. I think we're breaking some laws there by having Professor Higgins driving while joining us here. Yeah, it would have been funny if she got pulled over by the police right in the middle of our conversation. No, it wouldn't have been funny. I was just cringing, hopefully she doesn't get in an accident or in the middle of our conversation here and then we'd feel collectively guilty, I'll share that guilt with everybody. Thank you very much, Dr. Higgins. We'll move on to our next presenter, Anne Kirstie Aikio. Aikio? I hope I got that kinda right. So, she's joining us, she's language protection secretary, so a lot of responsibility, for the Saami parliament. And with that, we'll jump right into your presentation Anne Kirstie and will once again, I'll remind our participants, send in your questions at the end of her presentation. I have the opportunity to ask the question so, Anne Kirstie, the floor is yours.
Anne Kirste Aikio (AKA): Thank you very much and thank you very much for having me. And greetings from Sápmi or Sámi People's Homeland. I'm going to present you shortly the Sámi Language Act, which we have here in Finland and also introduce a little bit our work, what we do in Sámi Parliament, in Finland and also some examples and practices we have done to revitalise the Sámi language. But I have to go to the basics, maybe Sámi people and our language situation is not so well known but I will shortly present to you that. So, thank you once again for having me. Please, next slide.
So, Sámi people have that a quite good situation for them, if we think of rights to our language and or culture, their linguistic rights are constitutional rights for Sámi people as an indigenous group in Finland. In Finland, we have also other language minorities, but the Sámi has a very special role, both in legislation and other ways also as an indigenous group. So, I will now look a little bit closer about that legislation. Next, thank you.
And so, the... What is written to the Constitution is from the 95 and there is written that this have, as an indigenous people, the right to maintain and develop their own language, culture and traditional livelihoods. And it's quite strong, strong, strong words written and that we also have you, as you may know, we have a self-governance. The Sámi people have the self-governance in Sámi homeland and in the spheres of language and culture, and this self-governance is managed by the Sámi Parliament, which is elected by Sámi people, and I also work there. Next slide, please.
So, a little bit about the Sámi languages. Sámi languages they belong to indigenous language of Europe, Sámi languages are spoken in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia. Soon you will see a little map where you can see where the Sámi languages is... are spoken and it makes the situation of Sámi language quite special because, for example, Northern Sámi is spoken in Finland, Norway and Sweden, in three countries. So, so because... and the reason for that it's that Sámi people didn't have in their traditional areas these borders of states. So, the languages are from the time before the borders, so that is the situation we live in now. But a little bit about the situation we have in Finland, we have three Sámi languages here, which are not... which are languages, different languages. That means that, for example, when I speak northern Sámi, it's not taking for sure that I understand what is spoken on Skolt Sámi, for example, and the third Sámi language spoken in Finland is Inari Sámi. So, the Northern and Sámi is the biggest Sámi language, but it's not so big either, the speakers, the number is not so big. It's up... I think it's almost 20,000 people who speak Northern Sámi language, but these two other Sámi languages. Inari and Skolt Sámi language are highly endangered and have only speakers... about 300 speakers both. In the last 10 or 20 years there be very powerful revitalization of Inari Sámi language, and I think they have managed to double their speakers, so we are very happy and I'm going to let you know a little bit about the revitalization work they have done. Yes, and as you may know, what has happened to a lot of indigenous languages has happened to the Sámi language also, that we have a generation who has been in the boarding schools who have lost their language. So the situation of Sámi language, I'm going to look a little bit closer to that later but it’s quite difficult because of the history, but we have this Sámi Language Act and, and we have other measures which are done after, after that to preserve Sámi languages. OK, next slide, thank you.
And here is a map, and maybe it's a little bit difficult to see to you, but it's the northern part of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, which is the traditional lively living area for Sámi people. And here you can see that we have altogether ten languages, Sámi Languages. One on the Russian side has extinguished already, it doesn't have any speakers anymore unfortunately. So, but here you can see the areas, how the language borders go and they don't follow the state borders. Next, thank you.
So a little bit about the, about the Language Act. The purpose of the act is to ensure this constitutional right to Sámi, which I talk about earlier, and that this act contains provisions to the Sámi to use their own language before courts and other public authorities, and also the act includes duty to the authorities to enforce and promote the linguistic rights for Sámi people. And the goal is to ensure the right for the Sámi, to a fair trial and good administration. Yes. And the base idea of the act is that when you go to authorities and want to use your language, you don't have to specially refer to these rights but there authorities should offer you the services on Sámi languages. So in my opinion, we have quite good Sámi Language Act in Finland, but... next slide, thank you.
Yes, as I said, the act has this, the main idea is to, to give Sámis right to use Sámi language in the authorities, and, and all these official communications, the use of Sámi language in representative bodies, for example in municipalities, in Sámi Parliament, in Court is ensured by this law. We have also... the law is in the whole of Finland, but they have some special duties in the Sámi homeland, which is the northern part of the countries. And as I said, there's also, also put in written and included measures to promote linguistic rights for the state and the authorities. Thank you, next slide.
And also in the Language Act, is a written that the Sámi Parliament should have this language bureau or the language office, which I'm working, working in, and we work with all these translations which are made... which authorities need when, when Sámi people want to have a service on Sámi language. If they need translations, we work for that, but also we also monitor the app... or the implementation of this act, and we can give recommendations and questions and, and also educate and inform people about this Language Act. So we have, we work in both sides, both to the Sámi people, to inform Sámi people about their linguistic rights, but then we also work a lot with the authorities to, to improve the implementation of the Act. Yes. Thank you, next slide.
Time runs, so I would... I have so much to tell you about our situation, but I have to hurry so, so I can tell everything I wanted to tell you. But in... we have also other legislation in Finland, which ensures Sámi lingual rights. We have, for example, several social and health care legislation to use... the right for Sámi people to use Sámi language in social and healthcare services. We have also Act for early childhood education, the right for Sámi children to get early childhood education, which means kindergarten on Sámi language, and we have also an act on education, which includes right for Sámi people to get education on their own language. Next, please.
So shortly about the situation, even though we have this all, all this legislation to protect Sámi language, so shortly about the situation, Sámi languages, all of them are defined as highly endangered, and all our reports and... yeah researches which are done tells us that the linguistic rights of the Sámi people are very poorly realized or implemented. And despite of the Language Act, which we have and which is good, but the Sam... In the real life Sámis really can't, not, cannot use the Sámi language in authorities. There are not so many people who can speak Sámi language, who work at the authorities, and it has been made very difficult and the main... one of the biggest problem is that Sámi people doesn't get social and health service on their own language, and we have, for example, our elders who maybe cannot speak so well Finnish, so, so we have a big question about what happens to them if they need social and health care services. Also, that municipalities and authorities struggle to recruit the Sámi speaking people, we are not so many who speak Sámi language, so we don't have the people to do that work, and also some speakers experienced some negative attitude from the authorities. Next slide, thank you.
And some good practices, I could tell this a little bit more but maybe you can ask if you want to hear more. Sámi, people have done a very good work for revitalize the Sámi languages. We have at this language nest model, which is, I think, learnt from the Maori people, and that's the main thing... what was the reason we have managed to revitalize the Inari Sámi language. We have had scholar programs for adults to take language back, and also Finland states the financial support for all this language revitalization work and project has been very important in this system. And as far as we can see that this school system, as I mentioned earlier, the boarding school and all that system has been the most effective way to kill Sámi culture and Sámi language, but nowadays we see that the school system which teaches on Sámi languages, is the most powerful way to get the Sámi language back. So we are using that, I think quite well, and we are very happy of the... our education system on Sámi language. We have, for example, distance teaching projects so we can learn... teach Sámi language to abroad and also to the cities, and, and we have other things going on and lots of things going on to revitalize the Sámi language. For example, the Sámi language Week for the whole of... for Finland to show more Sámi language. But this was shortly what I wanted to tell you and show you. Maybe that next slide was only a photo of the distance education project, which is well, well, well taken. So thank you for my side and I'm very happy to answer questions if you have and discuss more about this.
MC: Thank you very much for that. I'm hoping that I'm back now, I see you there Annie Kirste, thank you for that. I guess I'm my first reaction was you're obviously, with the Sámi language, dealing with multiple jurisdictions and they are different countries. Here in Canada, we deal with multiple jurisdictions, and they're called provinces and they have responsibilities in those different areas and I'm wondering if, because you're saying that the legislation is specific to Finland. So, I'm wondering, has there have been conversations amongst the Sámi about other jurisdictions and looking to protect their rights in those other jurisdictions? Or are you seeing a big influx of Sámi coming to Finland?
AKA: Thank you. Yes, I think it's very difficult when we have is Sámi language speakers in different countries. I have to say something I didn't say, we also see that as an opportunity, for example, our dear neighbours, Norway, has quite good financial possibilities to, to support the Sámi language work in Norway, and I see that Finland also, and the Sámi people living in Finland are getting yeah... Yes, we get help from the work, which is done in Norway, but this also makes some problems. For example, the terminology work is very hard because of the impact of the Norwegian language to the, to the Sámi speakers in Norway and the Finnish language impact to the Sámi speakers in Finland. And we are very afraid that the Sámi speakers in Finland and Norway couldn't understand, in ten years, each other. So, we are making a lot of over... like cross border work to the Sámi language.
MC: The other question that one of the participants has is that you were talking about the successes you had in school, in terms of that being probably the most successful initiative in terms of preserving the Sámi language. I guess the questions being asked is how many hours are dedicated to the Sámi language teaching in the schools? Is it from k to 12? Is it the full immersion? What is the model that they use to bring back the Sámi language in schools?
AKA: So, the teaching is quite good, and I have to say that we also see that it's very important to get the language from the baby age and all the school age. So, we think that there has to be... like the road has to be made clear. So that is why I talk also about the kindergarten and also language nest. So, there are the children who go to the kindergarten and language nets, which are only on Sámi language, and then they move to the school, which is the teaching is mainly, legislation says that the education has to be mainly on Sámi language. So, so everything is on Sámi language.
MC: OK, so it's full immersion and you... When you're talking about pre-school for us, it's like day-care or supporting families in the home. Are you supporting those language speakers to ensure that that road starts right at, you know, two or one or two? Are they're hearing the same language as a baby?
AKA: Yes, it's they, they who have studied language revitalization say that the earlier the better. So, we think it's very good that so, so early as possible that babies go, or the children go to the day-care. And we have this method, the language nest method, for those families who have lost Sámi language, but I have to underline that we have also families which talk Sámi language as a mother tongue, and they can teach their children, so they are in different groups. They are like mother tongue speaking daycare groups and then there are other groups, these language nest groups, and we are trying to give also the parents this support when they have children in the day-care and as... or in our experience that this process is very like feelingful and it can be very healing also for the parents and a lot of Sámi parents has also got the motivation to learn themselves the Sámi language because that their children are in that, in this language nest, and it's like it's very emotional for the Sámi people because the history is very tragic as in Canada also, I think we have very similar experience of, of their loss of the language and what has happened, and so, so families are getting the language back. So, yes, and we are, of course, supporting people and to put the Sámi, put the children in the Sámi classes so that there wouldn't be that this cut. But the problem is that a lot of Sámi people are living in the cities, big cities, they are not living in the traditional Sámi area, so in these cities it's... the language situation is more... It's not so good and you can't get education on Sámi language in cities, it's only in Sámi areas. So, we are very worried about these children who are living in outside the Sámi area.
MC: And I think that goes a little bit to our next question in terms of... in the areas where there are few Sámi language speakers, I guess it's, are there, has there been a focus on perhaps those areas away from community, those who perhaps are not immersed in the language or using it all the time? And they, I know in our experience, those who leave the territory, leave the community in a lot of places. There's a lot... their language... there's a language loss, the language is not used as much, say, in the urban areas. So, I guess, are you looking to create new adult language speakers as part of that process within the urban or away from the communities?
AKA: If I understand the question right, so do we like, prefer to create new adult speakers? We have seen that this language nest is like most effective way to get more speakers to the language. But we have had also this kind of adult scholar programs and especially that has helped, for example, the education system, because we have, of course, the problem that children have the right for education in Sámi language, but we don't have any Sámi language teachers because, yes, the lack of the professional people on Sámi language. So that was one problem, for example, Inari Sámi community realize that we have a lot of children coming from the language nest from... to the school, but we don't have any teachers, so now we have to hurry up and teach very quickly Inari Sámi teachers and what they did then was to take teachers who couldn't speak Inari Sámi and they went to this one year very intensive Inari Sámi program, and then they got quickly more teachers. So, yes, we need both adult speakers, but also the children.
MC: You were also talking about the legislation that speaks to the right of the Sámi to get services, social services in their language. And you also talked about a little bit about the consequences, or wondering, what are the consequences for the Sámi who cannot access? And I'm wondering if there was any research because one of the groups here spoke a little bit to us about the Inuit talk about, you know, being unilingual speakers, trying to access services in their language and the consequences of not being able to do that. And I'm wondering if Finland has done any research on the consequences of missing those or not having access to those kinds of services.
AKA: I'm afraid we don't have actual information about that. That what we know and which, which is researched, that we know that we have had this lot of this revitalization programs. We have had this language nest programs and a lot of money from the state to support... for the support for the Sámi language and we see, even of this very good work, that the Sámi language revitalization hasn't developed this way we have hoped. So, so the Sámi language situation isn't getting any better, even though these measures taken. So that's one big question that what we should do more? Even more? And it's so critical because the language change is happening very quickly here in Finland. So, we have to work very hard actually now. But no, we don't have... but we have for examp- we have some well-known examples. For example, in Finland, we have this very strict system in health, health care service, that they research and exam that how the children are learning their language and developing in different ages, in different situations. And we have a lot of situations that there are Sámi speaking children and the social... and the health care worker is only speaking Finnish and they don't have a common language, and then this person should do some, some research on this kid, and it doesn't work. They don't... they can't do it. So, so that's... I think there are a lot of practical examples, but I don't think we have this information collected what happens if the language right doesn't... can't be fulfilled. But I also have to say that Sámi people are mostly, mostly two... Speaking two languages or multilingual. So, most of the Sámi people can speak Finnish.
MC: OK, so I guess is the exception to the rule when you have a unilingual Sámi speaker who then cannot access social services or any kinds of services? Understood. I do want to thank you Anne Kirste for joining us. It was a very informative presentation, I see the parallels between the struggles of the Sámi and the indigenous peoples here in Canada, the various jurisdictions, the various levels of proficiency, and also in areas where the language has perhaps even disappeared. We know there are no more language speakers, so I do want to thank you for your time and taking, I guess I'm wondering what time it is over there, in the evening, probably in the evening.
AKA: Yes.
MC: Thank you for staying after work and being with us and providing your presentation. So, Meegwetch.
AKA: Thank you.
MC: With that, ladies and gentlemen, we move to hearing from you, from your presentations or your opportunity to go on breakout sessions.
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