[LINK] "Six Nations Polytechnic to offer course in disappearing language"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Louise Brown describes the effort to use education to save Cayuga, an Iroquoian language, from extinction.

Among the Babel of global dialects exploding across Canada, one old home-grown language is in a race against extinction.

The language of the Cayuga people — one of the Six Nations of the Grand River, just west of the GTA — is fighting to survive while the last 49 native speakers are still alive to pass the torch. In a bid to breathe new life into the vanishing language, the community has been running preschool programs, elementary Cayuga immersion and post-secondary diplomas in the language.

But now Cayuga — and Mohawk, its more widely used cousin in the Iroquois language family — are getting a boost in recognition. The languages will be the subject of a new three-year Bachelor of Arts degree offered by Six Nations Polytechnic.

It’s the first time Queen’s Park has permitted a First Nations-run post-secondary institute to offer a degree of its own, and the Six Nations community sees the program in Ogwehoweh, which refers to both languages, as an academic lifeline to the heart of their cultures.

“Cayuga is close to extinction; it’s in a very fragile state but we need it for our traditional cultural activities and institutions,” said Rebecca Jamieson, president of Six Nations Polytechnic, who has studied Cayuga but not yet mastered speaking it.