Efforts continue to preserve languages

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Chief Mike Smith of the Kwanlin Dun, a Native community bordering Whitehorse, said he believes that before the territorial and federal governments agreed to lend their support, Aboriginal languages were in decline. He added that today more people are interested in taking language lessons, but even so, he believes that it will take considerable time before there is a surge of fluent speakers in the territory.

Smith said that he hopes the funding of between $70,000 and $80,000 allocated to each of the Yukon's 14 bands by Heritage Canada will benefit language preservation and development. Heritage Canada has said it will contribute $2.2 million altogether by 2005, that will support retention of the Tlingit, Gwich'in, Han, Northern Tutchone, Southern Tutchone, Kaska, Tagish and Upper Tanana languages.

The five-year Canada-Yukon Co-operation Agreement to support the territory's endangered cultures and languages ended in 2003.

Smith, who is Southern Tutchone, assists in the languages program that runs three evenings a week for two hours at the House of Learning in the village of the Kwanlin Dun.

"There is a quite an involvement of language programs in schools, but our centre here is involved in the cultural aspect of things. Rather than using a classroom scenario we invite many Elders who speak their languages fluently to the program's sessions, and it is basically the Elders who are the teachers. We are finding that through this social atmosphere method people are picking up basic conversational Aboriginal languages really fast," he said.

"We are finding that younger people are picking up the languages quickly; it is just amazing. Actually I really promote this program. It started off with a language planning session with the Elders and every three months we go back for an evaluation, have another dinner sit-down, talk and do presentations."

He said that the program uses Southern and Northern Tutchone and the coastal Tlingit languages. Smith hopes that in the future he will see more Elders with other languages drop by. "Actually we are quite surprised of how popular the program is. The Elders tell some great stories and that is how they teach the three languages. We've tried various methods in the past but this one really works, maybe because the whole community really gets involved and that is really quite important," he said.

Jo-Anne Johnson, rural programs co-ordinator at the Yukon Native Language Centre of Yukon College, said that she is also seeing more and more people taking classes. She said she knows of a program in Haines Junction where the First Nations employees start their day off with a half-hour lesson in the morning.

"I ... was very impressed. It certainly does not hurt anyone, including fluent speakers, to take a little bit of time off their day to speak their language. It is wonderful to hear people speak fluently, but if you stop halfway through or break the language up then it does not sound as good, but without doing that, it sounds beautiful and I think that goes for any language," said Johnson, whose language is Kaska.

Johnson said that she also noticed that there are fewer fluent speakers in some languages than in others. "For example, in Old Crow there are quite a few people who are fluent both orally and have a good knowledge and know how to write in their language, because there was a bible that was translated over a hundred years ago to the Gwichin language and this gave the people a much better chance of retaining their language," she said.