First Nations vie to save voices (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

         FIRST NATIONS VIE TO SAVE VOICES      

              By brian lynch                     

  Publish Date: 13-Apr-2006

  http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=17148

  The provincial government recently announced its plans to turn over $1
million to the FIRST PEOPLES’ HERITAGE, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE COUNCIL to help
preserve (and, in some cases, possibly even revive) the many aboriginal
languages in B.C. now in serious danger of vanishing for good. That amount may
seem small, given the scale of the task at hand. But TRACEY HERBERT, the
council’s executive director, points out that legions of dedicated volunteers
have long been used to doing a lot with very little—especially while the
federal government’s gears continue to turn slowly on big promises made years
ago about more money for the problem.

  “It’s incredible what people have been able to do with just scraps of
funding,” Herbert said, mentioning how volunteers working on projects that
have a mere $10,000 each behind them have managed to produce reams of language
resources and digital recordings.

  The new money, she explained, will help fund a total of $1.2 million that the
council plans to hand out this year as grants, in response to the roughly $10
million worth of funding requests that will likely be made for
language-preservation projects such as immersion programs, language classes,
and documentation. (Check out some of the work that’s been done to record
B.C.’s aboriginal languages at www.firstvoices.com/[1].)

  “In the healthier languages we have between 500 and 1,500 fluent speakers,
but in some cases it’s down to one or two fluent speakers left,” Herbert
said. 

  In the meantime, the council continues to wait for the Department of Canadian
Heritage to make good on a 2002 pledge of $172.5 million (spread out over 10 or
11 years) for a nationwide language-rescue mission. Virtually nothing has come
of this but reports, Herbert said, and things have only become more uncertain
now that the Tories have taken power.

  “When a government drags its feet, it’s very frustrating for organizations
like ours,” she notes. “This is a time-sensitive issue, simply because we’re
losing so many elders.”

  ANNIE CARRUTHERS, Canadian Heritage’s director of aboriginal-language
programs, agreed that the process “is moving slightly slowly”, but points to
progress made in face of a vastly complex issue. The main accomplishment so far
has indeed come in the form of a report (at
www.aboriginallanguagestaskforce.ca/[2]), but it’s a document that Carruthers
insists is “groundbreaking”.

  “I wouldn’t underestimate its importance,” she told the Straight, arguing
that the report’s 25 main recommendations are the work of an unprecedented
task force comprised of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis representatives. These
recommendations, she explained, are now being confirmed in consultations with
aboriginal people. Then, she said, “it’s our intention to respond with
action.”

Links:
------
[1] http://www.firstvoices.com/
[2] http://www.aboriginallanguagestaskforce.ca/
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