Proud time for Mohawk grandmothers (fwd)

[Phil CashCash]

Proud time for Mohawk grandmothers

PEGGY CURRAN
The Gazette
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/columnists/story.asp?id=C92FA476-1024-450C-AA94-282BC6E83993

As a little girl growing up in the 1950s, Tiorensawes Zachary loved to
listen to her mother talking to her grandmother and great-uncle in
their native Mohawk. But when they spoke to her, Tiorensawes answered
in English, the new language she was learning from the nuns at school
in Kahnawake.

"My grandmother barely spoke more than a few words of English," said
Zachary, 53.

"She was always disappointed that I couldn't speak to her in our own
language."

A generation later, Karahkwénhawe Goodleaf, 22, learned Mohawk at the
immersion school in Kahnawake. For conversation outside the classroom,
she had to visit her great-grandmother. Her parents had never learned
the language.

It's a proud week for grandmothers. Zachary, Goodleaf and 15 other
students from Kahnawake are to receive Certificates in Aboriginal
Education at McGill University's fall convocation tomorrow.

It's the first time the program, launched in 1993 in conjunction with
the Cree School Board, has been offered in Mohawk. Last week, 23
Mi'kmaq students in Wagmatook, N.S., collected diplomas after
completing a two-year program offered in Cape Breton through McGill's
Office of First Nations and Inuit Education.

Donna Lee Smith, director of the McGill program, said those who enroll
know the native language, but must brush up oral and written skills
before they can teach. It's hoped many will get a bachelor's of
education.

Most have found work as language assistants in neighbourhood schools in
their communities. In doing so, they are helping to prop up indigenous
languages, at risk from English, what Mark Abley, author of Spoken
Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, calls "the Wal-Mart of
languages."

Of the dozens of languages once spoken by Canada's aboriginal peoples,
only Cree, Inuktitut and Ojibway are still relatively healthy. "All the
others are at risk or have disappeared," Smith said.

Among the endangered ones, Mohawk is in a better position than most.
"There's so much passion behind the effort to have it stabilized. And
there are Mohawk-speaking elders still young and energetic enough to
take on the job of teaching the language to others.

Elders like Dorothy (Karihwénhawe) Lazore, who started teaching Mohawk
at Howard S. Billings High School in Châteauguay more than 30 years
ago.

When Kahnawake introduced an immersion program for elementary school in
1981, Lazore was recruited to teach Grade 1 - and eventually became the
school's principal.

An Akwesasne Mohawk who speaks six languages, Lazore was an obvious
choice when Eddie Cross, director of education services in Kahnawake,
asked McGill to offer the program on the South Shore reserve. Lazore
and Konwaronhiá:wi Deer spent last year teaching McGill students at the
United Church hall in Kahnawake. Now they're working on a curriculum to
help Mohawk-language teachers explain grammar, legends and even
traditional speech patterns.

Cross said the program met a desperate need to replace teachers who were
rapidly approaching retirement age.

But with only about 5 per cent of adults in Kahnawake fluent in the
language, the community is looking to bolster use of Mohawk beyond the
classroom - through radio and TV broadcasts, the Internet and adult
language lessons.

Smith said aboriginal education programs have "a ripple effect" as
students speak to their children, parents and pupils.

Like Cross, however, she favours other initiatives to get people to
speak indigenous languages on a daily basis.

Yet after half a century of listening, Zachary finds she can't speak her
language enough. She's proud to say she can read and write Mohawk, even
prouder to be able to chat with her aunt in the mother tongue she was
once too shy to speak. "Oh my gosh, it's who we are."

pcurran at thegazette.canwest.com

© Copyright 2003 Montreal Gazette