[LINK] "AFN asks Ottawa to declare all aboriginal languages official"

[rfmcdonald]

The idea, as reported by The Globe and Mail's Gloria Galloway, has a certain appeal. The collapsing numbers of speakers of most of these languages suggests to me that even ambitious language revitalization programs aren't likely to succeed, unfortunately.

The head of the Assembly of First Nations is calling for the nearly 60 indigenous languages spoken in Canada to be declared official along with English and French, an expensive proposition but one that he says is becoming more urgent as the mother tongues of aboriginal peoples disappear.

Perry Bellegarde, who was elected National Chief of the AFN last fall, agrees it would not be easy to require translations of all indigenous languages to be printed on the sides of cereal boxes and milk cartons.

“That would be the ultimate goal,” Mr. Bellegarde said in an interview on Wednesday at the three-day annual general meeting of the AFN, Canada’s largest indigenous organization. “But let’s do small steps to get there.”

As a start, he said, the federal government should draft legislation that would set aside the financial resources needed to promote, protect and enhance Canada’s aboriginal languages, some of which are now spoken by only a handful of elders and could be gone in five to seven years.

During a session on aboriginal language preservation at the AFN meeting, chiefs and other delegates debated a resolution calling on the federal government to provide money that would begin the work of revitalization. Without putting a dollar figure on it, they agreed it would be costly.