Canada: Nunavut's promise still lost in translation

[Harold Schiffman]

Nunavut's promise still lost in translation
By derrick
Created Apr 6 2009 - 6:00pm



The Nunavut Territory celebrated its tenth birthday on April 1, but
there were some awkward silences at the birthday party, because no
politician wants to admit that they forgot something as important as a
people's language. In the rush to create Nunavut ten years ago,
Parliamentarians forgot they were creating a territory that would not
conform to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada’s
Official Languages Act. In the lead-up to April 1, 1999, Parliament
passed dozens of amendments to federal legislation, but Ottawa chose
to ignore the fact that it was creating a jurisdiction that was going
to relegate both English and French to minority language status.

Eighty-five per cent of Nunavut’s population is Inuit, 75 per cent of
whom speak Inuktitut as their first language; yet the territory’s
government and stores and businesses all operate in English. Of the
territory’s 25 schools, 24 operate in English; the lone exception
being a new $5 million French school in Iqaluit. There are no Inuit
language schools. The Nunavut government spends $3400 per year for
language education for each francophone and only $48.50 on Inuktitut
education for each Inuk.

The Official Languages Act and Section 23 of the Charter say that the
minority official language group can be English or French, but
apparently cannot be both. For the past ten years, Ottawa has allowed
these two minority groups to get almost all the public education money
in the new territory, depriving the majority of essential funds to
build up an Inuit language school system.

This is the “elephant in the room,” the obviously controversial issue
which everyone avoided mentioning at Nunavut’s 10th birthday party.
Although this practice is morally wrong and may well violate Canada's
laws, Canada’s Official Language Commissioner has made no comment on
this injustice.

When Inuit signed the landmark Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA) in
1993, they assumed that they would be allowed to use their language at
work and in their schools. Article 4 of their Agreement obligated
Parliament to create Nunavut, and Article 23 required the government
to hire a “representative number” of Inuit (85 per cent) into the
schools and civil service, and to remove barriers -- including
barriers to Inuktitut -- in the workplace. But Ottawa has ignored this
requirement; and so Nunavut’s schools and government stumble on trying
to serve the citizenry in a language that they do not speak.

It’s not that Ottawa doesn’t understand how to remove linguistic
Barriers -- the Federal government’s bilingualism effort of the 1970s
and 1980s was devoted to removing barriers to Francophone
participation in the public service. The Federal government knows how
to create a bilingual public service; it signed a land claim saying it
would do this in Nunavut, but Ottawa refuses to ante up and pay for
the Inuit language school system that would make this possible.

Francophone parents are well aware that for francophone culture and
French language to survive in Canada public education had to be
delivered in the French language, by French-speaking teachers with
schools administered in French and with a francophone commission
scolaire (school board). Francophones have these rights -- in Quebec,
across Canada, and even within Nunavut. Ten years on, Inuit students
still do not have the same rights as their Francophone schoolmates.
Nunavut’s students attend English schools, run by Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland teachers who use an Alberta curriculum and have little or
no understanding of Inuit culture.

As Nunavut enters its second decade, Canada’s Official Language
Commissioner must re-examine how the Official Languages Act and
Section 23 of the Charter apply to Nunavut. At a minimum, the Official
Languages Act must be changed to acknowledge that one of Canada’s 13
jurisdictions uses a majority language that is neither English or
French, and public education money must be funnelled to support that
majority and their language. And let's remember that this majority
language is not a new immigrant language, like Mandarin for example --
Inuktitut has been spoken by Inuit for 5000 years and should rightly
be considered as a founding language of our nation.

Ten years ago Parliament passed the Nunavut Act in order to welcome
Inuit into Canada, but we left their language outside. It is now long
overdue for Canadian lawmakers to fix this mistake and give Inuit
their voices back.

Derek Rasmussen lived in Iqaluit, Nunavut from 1991 to 2003, serving
as policy advisor to various Inuit organizations in the territory.

http://rabble.ca/news/2009/04/nunavuts-promise-still-lost-translation
-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************