<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Verdana; min-height: 11px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="1"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px;"><B>By Brennan Clarke</B></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="1"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px;"><B>Victoria News</B></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="1"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px;"><I>Apr 21 2006</I></SPAN></FONT></DIV><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">Central Saanich teacher leading charge to save local indigenous language from extinction.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">To many people, language is little more than the words we use to communicate thoughts.</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> </SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">For John Elliott, it's a lifeline to preserving 10,000 years of aboriginal culture.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">"The language is the voice of the land. It's about our whole environment and how we interact with nature," he said. "The language is all about your beliefs and your whole world view."</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">Elliott, a teacher at Lau'Welnew tribal school, has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to preserving Sencoten, an indigenous language spoken by Coast Salish First Nations on both sides of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with the Saanich Peninsula at the heart of the ancient culture.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">Elliott's crusade to save the language is a continuation of work his father began in the early 1970s.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">Dave Elliott, a longtime fisherman, was working as a janitor with the Saanich Indian School Board when he decided to create a phonetic alphabet for Sencoten. It was a difficult task since Sencoten, like many indigenous languages, contains a range of sounds that are difficult to capture with the conventional 26-letter Roman alphabet used around the world.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">"My father used to say the language was dying and people were losing the whole value system," Elliott recalled. "I'm taking his work one step further."</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">When Europeans first arrived on Vancouver Island in the mid-1800s, there were an estimated 7,000 Sencoten speakers.</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> </SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">Today, Elliott said that number has shrunk to a mere two dozen elders, due in large part to a residential school system that prohibited aboriginal children from speaking their native tongue.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">"There's only 23 or 24 fluent speakers remaining," said Elliott. "Usually they're older people and some of them aren't that healthy. (The language) could die with the elders that are here today."</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">But the bid to save Sencoten (pronounced Sen-Cho-then) is yielding some encouraging results. All 200 of the school's students study the language, and the program has been around long enough that former students are now parents who speak the language around their children.<BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> "The fluency's coming, but it's slow. It took 50 years to take it out of us through the boarding schools," Elliott said.</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> </SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">"After a couple of generations it's going to make a difference. In the past there's been nobody at home to speak the language."</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">One of the most useful teaching tools for young aboriginal students is First Voices (firstvoices.ca), a three-year-old website that allows First Nations to record and archive their native languages.</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> </SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">First Voices, a co-operative venture between the Saanich Indian School Board and the provincially funded First People's Heritage Language and Culture Council, contains still pictures, video clips, recorded voices, games and other features to pique the interest of young learners.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">Elliott said the website is just a tool, not the saviour of his people's language.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">"It's only a tool kit really. There has to be a personal commitment to really knowing the language," Elliott said, noting the irony of using modern technology to save an ancient language.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">"It really is ironic. A lot of these things that are taking our kids' minds away and now we come along with an Internet tool."</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">First People's Heritage Language and Culture Council executive director Tracy Herbert, said so far 134 B.C. languages and three Yukon languages have been archived on the site. It's also attracted interest from other indigenous groups in Canada, such as the Mi'kmaq.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">"There are about 32 languages and 70-plus dialects in B.C. alone," she said.</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> </SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">The provincial government, which provides about $600,000 a year to help the council support First Nations arts, recently handed over an extra $1 million in one-time funding specifically for languages.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">Herbert said the federal government hasn't been quite so supportive. Although B.C. is home to 60 per cent of Canada's aboriginal languages, the Department of Canadian Heritage provides just $232,000 a year for language programs in B.C.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">Four years ago, former Heritage Minister Sheila Copps pledged $160 million to preserve native languages, but the federal government has yet to follow through on that commitment Herbert added.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">"It is a race against time and we really need to work co-operatively with the communities and the language stakeholders," she said.</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> </SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">For Elliott, there's no distinction between saving the language and saving the culture, since many of the words refer to creation stories and legends.</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> </SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><A href="mailto:bclarke@vicnews.com"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;">bclarke@vicnews.com</SPAN></FONT></A></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"><B>Examples of Sencoten language<BR></B></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"><BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> TENEW: land, earth or soil; can also mean "a wish for the people." <BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> SNANET: rock, mountain or boulder; can also mean "gift," since mountains are considered sacred places that the creator gave to the people.<BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> STEME: rain; but also means "a person falling from the sky," a reference to the first person who came to earth.<BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> TETACES: island; also means relatives of the deep in reference to humans who were turned into islands by the creator and told to look after the people.<BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="2"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10px;"> SCAANEW: salmon; also means "working people," which relates to a creation story in which the creator transformed a group of hard-working people into salmon.</SPAN></FONT></P></BODY></HTML>