Indigenous language survival

[Andrea Bear Nicholas]

I greatly appreciate the responses from you Danielle and 
Conor. Am still wondering what it will take to wake up our 
governments and universities before it is too late for 
most languages.

I will certainly check out the Harold Shiffman website.

Kci weliwen!
Andrea


  On Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:53:58 +0000
  "Danielle E. Cyr" <dcyr at YORKU.CA> wrote:
> 
> I fully agree with you, dear Andrea and Conor.
> 
> I remember a paper given by Harold Shiffman some years 
>ago:  It was
> something like : When equality is not enough: the case 
>of minority
> languages.
> I tried to retrieve it, without success. However, a look 
>at his website
> list of publications is really enlightening in this 
>regard:
> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/public/
> Cheers,
> Danielle E. Cyr
> ---- Original Message ----
>From: Conor Quinn 
> To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Sent: Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 11:57 AM
> Subject: Re: Indigenous language survival
> 
> 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 
> 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.
> 	
> 
>