Indigenous language survival

[Conor Quinn]

Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!

Well put!  Some might argue that not all communities have the resources for
full MTM education, but that misses the point: denial (and devaluing) of
MTM educational resources is what the problem actually is, and always has
been.  It puts Native education in a second-class position, and children
never fail to pick up on that, no matter how hard teachers work to counter
it.  Equality's only equality if it's actually equal.

Other efforts can be (and are) valuable steps along the way, but when
people on the ground succeed in bringing MTM education back, it's then that
the tide has really turned.

Thank you, Andrea, for reminding us that half of the solution is
remembering to challenge the original framing of the problem.

Slán,
bhur gcara




On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrea Bear Nicholas <abear at stu.ca> wrote:

> I have finally had a chance to read through the ongoing conversation about
> how to deal with the sense of shame and embarrassment that Indigenous
> students experience in learning their language, and it fills me with
> sadness and impatience. It strikes me that the conversation is missing an
> enormous point—-the fact that the source of the shame is ongoing today in
> any school where a dominant language is forced on Indigenous children as
> the main medium of instruction, and it is forced if there is no option for
> education in the medium of one’s mother-tongue. (Like Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
> I believe that a child’s mother-tongue is the language of his or her
> community, whether or not that child has had opportunity to learn to speak
> that language.)
>  So clearly, the larger question for people interested in saving
> Indigenous languages, is not how to deal with the historical trauma and
> shame, but how to stop traumatizing Indigenous children altogether. And
> that can only be done if students have the option of education in the
> medium of their mother-tongue. So rather than training Indigenous students
> just to teach in English or French, or training speakers of Indigenous
> languages just to teach their languages in core programs, universities need
> to train speakers of Indigenous languages to teach all subjects IN the
> medium of their mother-tongue (MTM education).
>  With the help of Dorothy Lazore, the founder of the first immersion
> school in a First Nations community, we at St. Thomas University in
> Fredericton, NB, established just such a program, over twelve years ago. It
> is our Native Language Immersion Teacher Training Program (composed of 13
> courses) which currently certifies speakers, both with and without
> teacher-training to teach in the medium of their mother-tongue. Since
> establishing this program we have trained the first cohort of teachers who
> began the very successful Mi’kmaq immersion program at Eskasoni, Cape
> Breton. As in the case of other immersion programs, this one at Eskasoni
> has begun the most essential task for maintaining their language—-that of
> creating functional child speakers BEFORE they have a chance to develop the
> shame and humiliation experienced by their peers taught only in the medium
> of English. And like other immersion programs, it has also demonstrated
> that immersion does no educational harm, but generally enhances the
> learning of a dominant language and improves educational outcomes.
>
> Of possible interest is the fact that our immersion teacher training
> program is movable. Where numbers warrant we send instructors to teach in a
> First Nation rather than requiring students to come to campus. We sent
> Dorothy Lazore and others to Eskasoni to train the teachers in that
> community, and that could be done for any community across the country.
>
> But ideally every university truly interested in the survival of First
> Nations languages should offer a program to train Indigenous language
> speakers to teach in the medium of their mother-tongue. Considering that a
> relatively poor country such as Papua New Guinea can support schools taught
> in the medium of over 380 Indigenous languages, surely Canada and its
> universities can support MTM education for the mere 60 or so languages
> indigenous to this country.
>
> Rather than spending resources focused on teaching Indigenous languages in
> core programs (which generally do not work to create speakers), and rather
> than wringing our hands over how to deal with the ongoing trauma of an
> imposed education in the medium of English or French, we would do far more
> for the survival of Indigenous languages if we could pull together to
> replace this traumatic form of education with MTM education. If this is not
> done we might just as well resign ourselves to the fact that the current
> wave of shame and trauma will soon become a tsunami that will swallow most,
> if not all, First Nations languages in the next few decades.
>
> Sincerely,
> Andrea Bear Nicholas, Native Language Immersion Programs, St. Thomas
> University, Fredericton, NB
>
> PS
> I was unable to attach an important piece on this topic by Tove
> Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Dunbar, so will try to send it separately.
>


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