Indigenous language survival

[Danielle E. Cyr]

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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