Preserving the 'language of Canada' (fwd)

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Preserving the 'language of Canada'
Mi'kmaq rarely spoken by younger generation

BRIAN FLINN
http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=52012&sc=89

Mi'kmaq has somehow survived repeated attempts to wipe it out. But despite
current efforts to keep it alive, the only language to ever arise from Nova
Scotia's forests, rivers and coast is in trouble.

Many young people whose parents speak Mi'kmaq have switched to English and
French. And that generation is the only thing keeping it from joining the
13 aboriginal languages currently listed as endangered.

"It is the language of Canada itself," said Eskasoni resident Joel Denny.
"There should be a law in protecting the language in Canada."

Statistics Canada says Mi'kmaq is the sixth most widely spoken of Canada's
50 aboriginal languages, with almost 9,000 reporting they understood it in
2001. That's remarkable, considering the Mi'kmaq might have been the first
aboriginal people in Canada to encounter Europeans. They were almost killed
off by imported disease and state-sponsored murder. The government in
Halifax put a bounty on the head of all Mi'kmaq men, women and children in
the 1750s.

In mainland Nova Scotia, Mi'kmaq never recovered from the period in the
mid-20th century, when aboriginal children throughout Canada were taken
from their families and forced into residential schools.

The language is more widely spoken in eastern New Brunswick and the Gaspe.
Cape Breton is home to most of the people who speak Mi'kmaq as a first
language.

The biggest concentration of Mi'kmaq speakers is in Eskasoni, 40 kilometres
southwest of Sydney. The largest aboriginal community in Atlantic Canada,
it's built on the side of a hill that reaches deep into Cape Breton's Bras
d'Or Lakes.

Denny believes isolation helped the language survive in his community. But
technology is making distance less of a barrier. TV, computers and video
games speak English and French to children. Denny said many don't want to
use Mi'kmaq, and he fears they are losing their culture.

"We don't need government and non-native people to come in and kill us off
now," said Denny, whose family is a noted group of Mi'kmaq dancers. "We're
doing that to ourselves."

Many of Nova Scotia's Mi'kmaq bands are trying to reverse the trend by
introducing more Mi'kmaq language instruction into reserve schools. Denny
isn't convinced it's working. Increasingly, Mi'kmaq is becoming a second
language.

Governments have done much to eradicate native languages. Today, they fund
Mi'kmaq education programs. But there is no publicly supported organization
advocating for preservation of the language, like the province's new Office
of Gaelic Affairs. And aboriginal languages don't enjoy official status in
Canada, like English and French.

Denny, 55, avoided residential school while his parents struggled to protect
him from the authorities. He recalls hiding in a tree while the RCMP and an
Indian agent grabbed two of his friends for forced education in English.

Assimilation wasn't always so deliberate. Europeans brought disease, which
killed thousands of people. They also brought technology that forever
changed the province's ecology.

Memories of the lost way of life are contained in the Mi'kmaq language.
Caribou - kalibu - is a Mi'kmaq word. The province's last caribou was shot
in 1921. Walrus lived in the inland sea around Eskasoni and along the Nova
Scotia coast. They were finally hunted out in the late 1800s.

Denny said the Mi'kmaq were a winter people, like the Inuit of northern
Canada. Inuktitut and Mi'kmaq have an almost identical word for a boat with
a skin stretched over it, which helped people travel and hunt in cold
months. In Denny's language it's ka'ak - or kayak. Toboggan is a Mi'kmaq
word.

English is a collection of words borrowed from Latin, French, German and
just about every language that encountered the British Empire. The original
meaning of words is usually obscure.

Anna Nibby Woods, a Mi'kmaq master's student at Mount Saint Vincent
University, said people who grew up with an aboriginal language find it
difficult to express themselves in English. They find English words are
inadequate, because they have little relationship with other words, or with
the environment.

The Mi'kmaq words for headache and the cure for headache are related to the
word for a plant that cures headaches, she said. In English, there is
nothing in common between the words "headache" and "aspirin."

Denny said he has been studying Mi'kmaq for 20 years, collecting old songs
and figures of speech. He's convinced it originates from the sounds heard
in the environment, and is vital to understanding the environment. The
meaning of words is embedded in those sounds."When you talk Mi'kmaq, you
talk feelings, you talk description, you talk what happened and what's
going to happen," Denny said. "We don't name stuff. We describe stuff."

The word for skunk, abigjilu, literally means "an animal that steps backward
and farts." That's useful information if you ever encounter one.

"When he's stepping backwards, get out of the way," Denny laughs. "You know
damn well he's going to fart on you."

Other words are filled with traditional values. Woman, or e'pit, means "she
carries the egg within." It's a constant reminder of her reproductive role.
Man, ji'nm, means "he carries the great life force." Denny said a father is
one responsible for passing on that life force.

The maternal grandmother, kukmijinu, is the traditionally most important
figure in a child's upbringing. She "put the egg within" the child's
mother.

"There's no good or bad in Mi'kmaq. There's just consequences," Nibby Woods
said. "Everything is interconnected and interrelated. That's why there is
respect for everyone around you."

Woods spoke Mi'kmaq before she went to residential school in Shubenacadie.
She recalls later asking her grandmother to teach her the language. Her
grandmother refused. She said it would only be a burden. As today,
employment opportunities were in English.

Woods got an education in English and had a career in advertising, before
rediscovering her Mi'kmaq heritage in her mid 30s.

Teaching Mi'kmaq as a second language has some value, she said, but it's not
the same as having it as a mother tongue.

"It's kind of like a novelty thing, because you're not thinking in Mi'kmaq,
you're not dreaming in Mi'kmaq," she said. "You're translating for
Mi'kmaq."

bflinn at hfxnews.ca