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rfmcdonaldThe clock on the kitchen wall at the Moraviantown Reserve seniors' centre loudly clicks away the seconds as Velma Noah waits to see if any of the few remaining speakers of a vanishing language can remember the word for "beet."
Five elderly women and a man stare ahead of them, silently searching for a word they may not have heard since they were children, when nearly everyone on this small reserve could speak the language. Ms. Noah frets the cover of an English-Delaware dictionary, which might hold a clue. But if the word for beet isn't in the book and she can't tease it out of the minds of the three women most likely to know, one more piece of the language could be gone forever.
Alma Burgoon is 80; Retta Huff, 86; and her cousin Mattie Huff, 90. Along with one or two other elderly women on the reserve, "they're the last known speakers. They're all over the age of 70," says Ms. Noah, 36-year-old mother of four.
[...]
Europeans gave this language the name Delaware (or Munsee Delaware), but its advocates today are taking back the name Lunaape (or Lenape). Its once-large territory has been reduced to a rump at Munsee-Delaware Nation -- also known as Moraviantown -- a reserve near London, Ont., with a population of about 200. During the 20th century, teaching Lunaape to children fell out of favour. Today it survives in the gossip of a handful of elders and on stop signs that read "ngihlaal."
Like dozens of First Nations languages across the country, Lunaape is in danger of disappearing within a matter of years. Canada's indigenous languages are in a state of crisis. Those who, like Ms. Noah, would save them can't afford to wait. Unless the knowledge is transferred to a new generation, dozens of traditional tongues will breathe their last.
By Statistics Canada's count there are around 50 indigenous languages spoken in Canada (other organizations reach higher figures by counting certain dialects as separate languages), and 222,210 people reported them as a mother tongue in the 2006 census. Only a handful of these languages -- principally Inuktitut, Ojibway and various dialects of Cree -- can be expected to survive without active intervention, according to linguistics experts. In 1951, 87% of aboriginal Canadians reported an indigenous language as a mother tongue compared with 21% by 2001 and 19% in 2006.
The situation really is that dire. As Statistics Canada reported in 2001, the numbers of speakers of Cree and Ojibwa fell snotably between 1996 and 2001, despite relatively strong population growth among the Cree and Ojibwa. The number of speakers of Inuktitut did increase, but as a recent MacLean's article suggests, even that language is facing serious challenges on its home turf as young Inuit don't pick up the language.
On the dusty streets of Iqaluit, Nunavut, stop signs read in two languages: English and the squiggly syllabic characters of Inuktitut. So do signs at the post office, bank and grocery store. Inuktitut is the first language for 70 per cent of the territory's 30,000 residents, and by some measures appears one of the healthiest indigenous languages in the country. But here in the capital, a town of about 3,600, English is the language of choice among young Inuit. Children wear SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirts, and buy the latest CDs by 50 Cent and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Internet use is widespread, as is satellite TV. The result: Inuktitut is a language under siege, and assuring it survives, even flourishes, has become a priority.
In a controversial move this year, Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik ordered that senior bureaucrats learn the language or lose their jobs. The government is also drafting two new language laws designed to help make Inuktitut Nunavut's working language by 2020, and lift employment barriers for Inuktitut speakers. "It really does open the ice for Inuit," says Johnny Kusugak, Nunavut's language commissioner. "Inuit kids can now look up and see that there are lots of positions in the government where they can reach their goals."
[. . .]Some argue that young people in Iqaluit avoid Inuktitut because of the difficulty navigating its different dialects. But Louis-Jacques Dorais, a researcher at Université de Laval who has documented Inuktitut's decline, says other factors are at play. Because English is the language of pop culture and business, Inuktitut "risks being increasingly limited to petty topics, on the one hand, and highly symbolic domains on the other," he says. Serious social ills are also undermining education in either language. School dropout rates are astronomical -- only about a quarter of Inuit children graduate from high school -- and drug abuse and alcoholism are rampant.
In more isolated communities outside of Iqaluit, Inuktitut appears much healthier. Many of the elder residents are unilingual Inuktitut speakers. Still, even in places like Pangnirtung, a tiny hamlet an hour's flight north, English use is on the rise. "It started when the government sent people off to schools in places like Churchill," says Anuga Michael, 26, who worries about the type of education his infant son, Wayne Wilson, will receive. "My first priority is to teach him Inuktitut. That's the way I was taught, so that's the way I'll teach him." Asked about the challenge of protecting Inuit culture, though, he sighs: "It's complicated."
The problems facing the languages of Canada's First Nations, like the problems facing all linguistic minorities, is the fact that these languages and their associated communities have to compete against more widely spoken languages with many more community and many more resources for their communities. Young people won't pick up a language if they don't see it as useful. English, or French in Québec, has a huge advantage, so huge, one might add, that a full-scale revival of the languages of Canada's First Nations is probably unrealistic.
