Indigenous language survival

[Conor Quinn]

Dia dhuit, a chara!

Kil na kulasuweltomulonen psi te tan kisuwikhomon.  Woke me right up to a
whole other aspect of the problem.  And in the meantime (mesq
tuhkiyawolotihtihq psi te governments and universities), I guess the
challenge is to find and recover spaces in everyday life where speakers and
learners can regularly get together and just use the language
naturally---preferably with as many small ones underfoot (and included) as
possible.  The Myaamia seem to have developed a really strong system of
agreements between families to help get everyone speaking as much as
possible.

Apc ote kulasuweltomulon,

Conor


On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 11:12 AM, Andrea Bear Nicholas <abear at stu.ca> wrote:

> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>>


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