Aboriginal diversity spans language, culture (fwd link)

[phil cash cash]

Aboriginal diversity spans language, culture

The Canadian Press
Date: Tuesday Jan. 15, 2008 8:40 AM ET

INUVIK, N.W.T. — Their steady murmur was the soundtrack to the recently
completed hearings on a proposed Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline, as they
are to virtually any important public event in the Northwest Territories.

The presence of -- and need for -- aboriginal translators belie the
too-often-held view in mainstream Canada that all First Nations are similar.

"People are different, culturally,'' said Brian Chambers, manager of the
pipeline hearings, who travelled with them to communities as widely separated
as Fort Liard just over the British Columbia border to Sachs Harbour in the
High Arctic.

Along with French, the hearings had to be simultaneously translated into four
mutually incomprehensible languages -- Gwich'In, Inuvialuktun, South Slavey and
North Slavey. And that's fewer than half of the aboriginal languages spoken in
the territory.

That linguistic chasm is just one example of the overall cultural diversity
revealed in Statistics Canada census data on native people, released Tuesday.

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