Language survival

Page 14

A project designed to preserve the Dene Suline language on the Cold Lake First Nation has been granted $400,000 over the next two years. This is to top-up the $200,000 the nation has received for the project in each of the past three years.

Approved by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Daghida Project, which translates into 'We are alive', is a joint effort between Cold Lake and the University of Alberta. Three years ago, the band was one of the first Canadian reserves to receive the annual support.

The prerequisite for reviving a language is not money, however, said Sally Rice, an associate professor at the university in the linguistics department. The long-term survival of the Dene Suline, as well as other First Nations languages, requires the will of the people to learn and the desire of the Elders to teach.

"No matter how much money you're given, it only takes people speaking every day to save the language. We need to convince the Elders not to take the language with them," Rice said.

Less than 15 per cent of the reserve's population of 1,900 is fluent in Dene Suline, said Rice, and the isolation of Cold Lake, in comparison with other nations in the Athabaskan languages family, has been one cause of the language being slowly lost.

In a 25-page survey conducted in 1998 of every household on the reserve, the vast majority of those fluent Dene Suline speakers were in their sixties. Residential schools and then later the assimilation of English into everyday life, such as television, has resulted in very few younger residents being exposed, let alone being conversational, in the language, Rice said.

The revitalization of the Dene Suline is occurring under the direction of Valerie Wood, the Daghida Project co-ordinator. Following a 20-year absence from the reserve, including time to obtain a degree in anthropology and linguistics, Wood returned to Cold Lake. She worked with Rice at the university and it was there that this relationship forged Daghida.

Following a teaching method that was developed in California where other languages were endangered, Wood implemented a master-apprentice relationship with a Dene Suline speaker paired with a person wanting to learn the language.

"The language is taught in its natural form as opposed to teaching it through literacy," said Wood. Instead of reading and writing, conversations are used to pass along knowledge.

Like many other Aboriginal dialects, Dene Suline had no written form and that has required Wood to create numerous materials in the race for the language's preservation. By establishing a written system, there is a good foundation to create a dictionary, although that will eventually need the collaborative efforts of the community.

With those words, there are plans to re-transcribe 23 stories that were collected a century ago and publish them in a book.

Both Wood and Rice are aware that even with the additional two years of funding granted, there was never any illusion that within five years the number of Dene-speaking residents would change significantly. Instead, Wood measures growth by seeing the slow progress and acceptance of the language within the community, including the posting of signs in Dene.

"This has not been a directive I've given, but other departments have done this on their own," said Wood.

Wood too is able to practice being a mentor on a daily basis with her four-year-old grandchild. She and others are excited when they can observe and listen to the younger generations begin to use the language.