Students excited about new rule

While most schools will be entering the new school year with the same agenda, one school will be markedly different. York University students will be permitted to hand in their thesis in one of at least 50 different Aboriginal languages.
York University is located in Toronto and is Canada's third largest university. They boast a community of 50,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff. They will be celebrating their 50th anniversary in 2009. Known for their unique, interdisciplinary approach to learning, this new endeavor certainly makes York U a cut above the rest.
PhD student, Fred Metallic who helped spearhead this initiative, was positive about this change that is taking place, but at the same time it seemed bittersweet.
"Something that we're celebrating is not necessarily a celebration because we should not be in this situation. We should not be in the situation where we only have two masters thesis written in an Indigenous language in Canada. That's all we have. It's nothing to celebrate," Metallic explained.
Although Metallic expressed his displeasure with the current situation, where Aboriginals have been forced to fight for their language; he spoke fondly of the initiative of York U.
"I applaud them for recognizing there's an institutional gap and there needs to be changes to policies to protect Indigenous languages. I applaud them, at the same time we have to go beyond recognizing the validity of our languages and take some serious action to support them. Hopefully when the dissertation is written by next summer or spring, it will be a celebration and not something that traditionally is a defense."
Dean Barbara Rahder of York U expressed the potential for a better learning environment.
"I think that one of the things that was quite persuasive to me was the idea that the relationship between language and knowledge and culture, and the fact that their ideas and the way you express them are intimately related to the language and in fact there are concepts in some languages that can't be translated into other languages and that knowledge can only be transmitted in its original form."
Rahder also explained the importance of taking on these languages, if only to keep them alive.
"There are many living languages, cultures and knowledge that are on the brink of extinction. This is one way of helping preserve that knowledge. If we're talking about trying to preserve diverse cultures in Canada - Native language is part of that."
Rahder illustrated the logistics of allowing dissertations to be handed in with the huge array of Aboriginal languages available in Canada.
"The way it works is that first of all the student already has to be fluent in the language so we have to know that they can do the work in their language to begin with. Then we have to make sure they can get adequate supervision for the research in their language and the hope is that once they've done this, they will in fact be able to help the next students that come along after them. So there is no particular language, other than they have to be Native languages of Canada."
Metallic explained that the whole process took about three years for it to come to fruition.
"It started to occur around year two or year three of my residence at York University. After doing my course work and my comprehensives, it was discussed by my supervisor and I that it would be very difficult to conclude my studies in the English language around the research that I was going to be conducting. We realized that if this is going to strengthen the relationship between the institutions and Indigenous communities changes would have to be made around policies on dissertations and what languages they could be written in."
After being approached by a couple graduate students, Metallic being one of them, Rahder was convinced it would only be a matter of time.
"I was persuaded that their logic was good, they had good reasons for doing this and I let them know that it would take a while for the regulations to be changed but I then set upon consulting with faculty, and making proposals, developing proposals, and consulting with people and the change in regulation was passed."
Metallic repeatedly offered a nod to Eleanor Johnson; an old supervisor from Trent University whom he claims originally carved out the path for this new initiative.
"I go back to my Eleanor Johnson in 1999. And when I questioned her on governance, she automatically raised the issue of language and said - how can you understand governance if you don't understand the language? Work in your language and you might understand the relationship that we have with the state today and why it is the way it is."
Metallic has taken that advice to heart. "There's something in the language that I think if people could tap into, I think they would understand what the struggle is about."
The first dissertation written in an Aboriginal language at York University should be completed in the spring/summer of 2009.