Indigenous language survival

[Andrea Bear Nicholas]

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.