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From Saskatoon Star Phoenix ...

AFN calls for massive investment in languages
Charles Mandel, CanWest News Service - July 12, 2007

HALIFAX -- An Assembly of First Nations call Wednesday for $2.6 billion over 11 years to revitalize aboriginal languages resonated with Deborah Jacobs.

The 50-year-old educator and member of British Columbia's Squamish Nation is minimally fluent in her own language. But then that's not surprising when out of the Squamish Nation's 3,600 people, only 15 are still able to speak their native tongue.

The problem came into sharp focus during the second day of the Assembly of First Nation's annual meeting on Wednesday. Band chiefs and delegates from across Canada listened as Katherine Whitecloud, a regional chief from Manitoba and a member of the Dakota Nation, told the gathering: "Our languages are the cornerstone of who we are as people. Without our languages, our culture cannot survive."

Whitecloud blamed the decline of the languages partly on the residential school system, in which aboriginal children were removed from their homes and sent to live in the schools, where they were abused for speaking their own languages, among other things.

Whitecloud said when the children of residential schools became parents, they refused to teach their own children native languages because the ability to do so had been beaten out of them.

The residential school system remained in effect for more than 100 years in Canada and the intergenerational effect of their "destructive policies" continue to be felt to this day, Whitecloud told the assembly.

"We are in a state of emergency respecting our First Nations' languages. Statistics show that 50 out of 53 First Nation languages are declining, endangered, or in danger of extinction," Whitecloud said. "First Nations languages in Canada are in a desperate state."

Statistics on fluency and other data on aboriginal languages is currently limited. At the assembly, questionnaires on the languages were circulated in an attempt to gather more information.

Whitecloud criticized the Conservative federal government for cutting $160-million in funding for aboriginal languages in 2006. In its place, the government made available $5 million per year for aboriginal languages, amounting to $5 for each native in Canada to learn aboriginal languages, Whitecloud said.

"These funding levels are unacceptable for First Nations, especially when you consider that in budget 2007, the federal government announced that they were going to spend $642 million over five years for the promotion and development of official languages in Canada."

She said the federal government has a legal obligation through various treaties and legislation to provide adequate resources to support First Nations' language preservation. "Canada has no national policy or legislation that recognizes the distinct status of First Nations' languages as the original languages of Canada,'' she said.

The AFN wants $2.6 billion over 11 years to follow through on its National First Nations Language Strategy that would see the languages back in common use by 2027.

Jacobs believes the money the AFN wants for language funding is reasonable given the language needs in the many aboriginal communities. "I find it's a rather thrifty number that's been put out there."

Chief Lance Haymond of Quebec's Eagle Village First Nation also supported funding for languages. "We need the investment to maintain and recreate our languages. Most of our culture, our history, is related to language."

He said in Kipawa very few people spoke Algonquin, the native language, and those who did are over 50 years of age. Haymond himself is bilingual -- in English and French. He doesn't speak his own language.

After Whitecloud addressed the assembly, a number of delegates expressed their frustration with the state of education and negotiations over funding with the federal and provincial governments.

"We're not the second, third or fourth: We're the first government of this land," one said to loud applause, before adding his annoyance over band chiefs being unable to secure meetings with government representatives.