Tories cut fund to save native languages (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Tories cut fund to save native languages

By Robert Freeman
The Progress
rfreeman at theprogress.com
Dec 01 2006
http://www.theprogress.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=39&cat=23&id=783961&more=

The Sto:lo Tribal Council is demanding the Conservative government in
Ottawa restore $160 million cut from a fund to save aboriginal
languages from extinction.

“B.C. First Nations have two-thirds of aboriginal languages, but get
only one-tenth of national funding (for languages),” STC president
Clarence Pennier said in a letter to Heritage Minister Bev Oda.

He reminded the minister that the federal government has a “fiduciary
obligation to First Nations to protect, revitalize and maintain our
languages. No First Nation language can be allowed to go extinct.”

Tyrone McNeil, STC vice-president and chair of the First People’s
Heritage and Culture Council, said there are only a dozen fluent
speakers of Halq’emeylem left among the 5,000 Sto:lo, and a “fair
number of people” who have picked up the language - but not well enough
to teach it to others.

Restoration of the funds cut by Oda is “urgently needed now,” he said,
because “we’re losing our elders daily” who can speak Halq’emeylem.

According to a 2001 national survey just 24 per cent of North American
Indians, Inuit and Metis can still converse in their native language, a
drop from the 29 per cent measured five years ago.

Minister Oda cut funding to $5 million a year for 10 years, for a total
of $50 million, effectively cutting the fund by 68 per cent. In 2002
the previous Liberal minister had set aside $172.5 million over 11
years.

McNeil said the federal Tories should follow the lead of B.C. Premier
Gordon Campbell who has doubled provincial funding for native languages
to $2-million and embarked on a “New Relationship” with the aboriginal
people of this province.

“He sees the value in First Nations learning more about their identity
(through language) and the positive impact that has,” McNeil said. “He
sees there’s no better way of improvement, than we do it ourselves.”

The federal Tories “should be doing the same thing,” McMeil added, “but
it’s just not happening.”

© Copyright 2006 Chilliwack Progress