Language is worth the investment [Editorial]

When Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore announced recently that he was not only renewing funding for BC Aboriginal language retention and preservation programs, but was increasing the funding substantially from $232,000 to $834,000, our first response was....language prevention programs in BC were only sharing $200,000!?

Sure, that’s a lot of money when you consider that that’s what hockey star Jaromir Jagr earned—per goal—while he toiled in the KHL in the 2009/10 season. That’s what one night’s purse was for the UFC’s Anderson Silvia. But, let’s be honest, that’s not a lot of money to reverse the damage done over 100 years since contact for BC’s 20 different languages.

Sorry for being ungrateful for the increase, but really man? That’s what you were expecting would help pull the Aboriginal languages in British Columbia back from the brink of extinction? Because that’s where all of them are at this point in their long history.

According to a report prepared by the First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council this year, “every First Nations language in B.C. is in danger of being lost.”

And the fine people of the FPHLCC aren’t just being alarmist for the sake of a headline. Their studies have shown that of the four categories of use that a language can fall into—thriving, declining, critically endangered or extinct—all but three are in the critically endangered category. And the other three are extinct, though there is a shade in that category called “sleeping” that they prefer to place them in.

Sounds nice, huh? Sleeping. But let’s not sugar coat it. Let’s call it for what it is, a coma, because what sleeping actually means is that there are no living speakers left, the languages are not used, though there may be some language programming in place, there is limited documentation that contains the languages, and with no speakers to check for accuracy there is no way to increase that documentation.

How sad is this tale? Imagine all the wisdom that has been lost from those cultures, all the science, the history that has been lost to the world.

Why is language revitalization important today, the report asks.

“Language is the way a culture is transmitted—it represents the identity of a people and holds cultural, historical, scientific and ecological knowledge. When a language is lost, we all lose out on the knowledge held within it and the unique way its speakers view the world.”
The report tells us that of the Aboriginal population surveyed—109,000 individuals—only 5,609 of them, or 5.1 per cent, are fluent in their Aboriginal language. That’s province-wide people.

Let’s break that down a little bit per language. The most healthy of our critically endangered languages is Gitsenimx1 with 1,200 fluent speakers. Compare that wealth with that of the AingÌt with only two fluent speakers. These are the two ends of a spectrum. There are 14 languages with under 50 fluent speakers each. Five of those 14 languages have under 25 fluent speakers each.

And of all the fluent speakers in the province, 52 per cent of them are 65 years of age or older.

Not to be morbid or anything, but today the life expectancy of a First Nation citizen is 68.9 years.
And those who make up the majority of our growing communities, those young people under the age of 25, only two per cent of them are fluent in their languages.
We cannot underestimate the urgency of this situation.
Look, we don’t want the minister to think that the increase isn’t welcome. It is. It is a step in the right direction. But while we should be running at top speed along this path, a mere step seems frustratingly inadequate.

The report acknowledges that there is a lot of work being done in communities to revitalize languages, including the creation of new speakers in immersion programs. There are communities committed to recording, documenting and archiving their languages.

There is hope, despite all the doom and gloom, and that’s why adequate resources from government must flow freely and immediately.

Let’s be clear, the reason why our languages are in such a state has much to do with the last 100 or so years of the government’s assimilation practices.

Here’s a little stat to consider—All First Nations people in BC were fluent 100 years ago. Then a little thing called the residential school system came along, and government policies to eradicate First Nations’ languages and culture were imposed. Over 100 or so years, the percentage of fluent speakers has taken a nose-dive from 100 per cent to only 5.1 per cent. It’s appalling.

The FPHLCC report estimates that if adequate resources aren’t made available the number of fluent speakers in BC will decline to less than one per cent in less than five years. Even with adequate resources, the decline will continue, but it will be slowed and eventually reversed. Within the next two years, according to FPHLCC estimates, the number of fluent speakers would dip to just under four per cent, and by that five-year mark will have climbed back over the four per cent and be on the upswing.

There is a quote at the end of the report that we particularly like. It reads:
“Language is at the core of our identity as people, members of a family and nations; it provides the underpinnings of our relationship to culture, the land, spirituality, and the intellectual life of a nation.”

Isn’t that worth a hefty investment?

Windspeaker