Mi'kmaw woman calls for 60 Indigenous languages to be adopted as official languages of Canada

[loomer]

Mi'kmaw woman calls for 60 Indigenous languages to be adopted as official languages of Canada
Says House of Commons e-petition a way for Indigenous Peoples and Canadians to come together

A parliamentary petition written by a Mi'kmaw woman is proposing that 60 Indigenous languages spoken in Canada be adopted as national official languages.

Jenna Robar, a 24-year-old holistic health coach living in Nova Scotia, submitted her proposal through the House of Commons website Feb. 28 calling on the federal government to "have each language recognized nationally, with implementations on regional and provincial levels."

Robar is a member of Benoit First Nation in Newfoundland, a band not officially recognized by the federal government of which some members are also members of Qalipu First Nation.

In less than two weeks, Robar's petition has gathered over 350 of the minimum 500 required signatures for her proposal to be presented to the House of Commons.

Robar, who speaks English, French and Spanish, said she was inspired to launch the petition after attending a youth conference this year. She focused on language because of the lack of resources available to learn the Mi'kmaw language in the Atlantic region.

"We don't have a ton of Spanish speakers in Nova Scotia but we have tons of resources to learn Spanish here," she said.

"That lit the fire within me to do more to revitalize Mi'kmaw."
'We need to come together'

Robar said she sought support from Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a non-Indigenous Liberal MP for the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York, because she once lived in his riding and had worked with him on community projects.

Erskine-Smith said in an emailed statement that language is central to Canadians' "sense of identity, community, and culture."

"I sponsored Jenna's petition because it rightly highlights the need to preserve and protect Indigenous languages," he said.

If Robar's petition surpasses 500 signatures, Erskine-Smith will present it in Parliament. The rules governing the House of Commons would require the government to respond within 45 days.

If her proposal is adopted, Robar said she recognizes the complexity of the work and resources it will take to give Indigenous languages an official designation in each province and territory across the country. She said she hopes her petition will draw attention to language initiatives already underway, and highlight the importance of language preservation.

Indigenous languages are already official languages in Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

Ideas like broadcasting hockey in Indigenous languages are examples of how language can be central to efforts in reconciliation, Robar said.

"It would just enrich Canada's culture and diversity within those nations, because [Canada is] many different nations and it's time to recognize that," she said.

"I think now more than ever we need to come together and realize the value of working together."

Robar said she's confident her proposal will find support in the House of Commons. She said she's spoken to MPs, like Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, the NDP member for Nunavut, who are ready to back the initiative.
Prioritizing language

Jaime Battiste, the Liberal MP for Sydney-Victoria, is the first Mi'kmaw representative in the House of Commons. The law school graduate and member of Eskasoni First Nation in Nova Scotia used his first statement in the House of Commons to speak in the Mi'kmaw language.

"It's always my hope that when I speak my language in committees or in the house, it gives a notion of creating space for that accommodation," Battiste said.

"I'll continue to make sure that we're prioritizing language and anyone out there who's also [promoting] Indigenous languages."

Battiste was part of a provincial working group that examined how Mi'kmaw could be introduced as an official language in Nova Scotia. He said figuring out where, when and which Indigenous languages were to be used is a complex process on a national scale.

"Does that mean that we're changing signs? Does that mean that everything written in the House needs to be in several different languages? I think it's a great step in the direction that we need to go, but I think it's possibly easier for the provincial [governments]," Battiste said.

Source

I'd very much like to see the same adopted here in Australia. There's been sporadic efforts here and there - the ABC does some work in a few of the languages (mostly Warlpiri and Yolngu), as does NITV and some non-governmental organizations - but it's very piecemeal and it's easier to get a form in Mandarin than it is in Bundjalung or Arrente. There are, though, some real ugly infights in a lot of the language preservation groups - I know with the local dialect where I live there's a big split between the mainstream teacher and the elders who disapprove of some of her orthography and pronunciation (not helped by the fact that the dialects split over very minor pronunciation differences) - which complicate any such effort.

[The Romulan Republic]

Morally I can find no objection. Practically, I can see it being exceedingly difficult to implement, both for the reasons loomer gives, and because there would then be an expectation for the government to provide services in those languages, and to use them all in government notices/institutions, as they currently do for French and English, for many of which available translators/speakers to hire are probably limited in number.

If it can be done, it should be. Although I'll add that, if we were going to add another official language, then based on the percentage of the population who speaks it, Mandarin would be an obvious choice, as it is the third most spoken language in Canada after English and French, with over 600,000 speakers in Canada according to the government:

https://canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/ ... stics.html.

[Solauren]

And as a worker of the Federal government, trying to remember the forward extension for the guy that speaks french in our area is hard enough. 60 other languages, and not being able to identify it before transfer? Yeah....

[Lord Revan]

I suspect this isn't really practical to impliment due to there simply being too many variations (with each community and tribe having their own dialect(possibly even subgroups within those) and holding it as the "one true way" to speak said language).

Morally there's nothing objectionable about and indeed one could argue it's a moral benefit, however the practicality of it is another matter.

[loomer]

Morally I can find no objection. Practically, I can see it being exceedingly difficult to implement, both for the reasons loomer gives, and because there would then be an expectation for the government to provide services in those languages, and to use them all in government notices/institutions, as they currently do for French and English, for many of which available translators/speakers to hire are probably limited in number.

If it can be done, it should be. Although I'll add that, if we were going to add another official language, then based on the percentage of the population who speaks it, Mandarin would be an obvious choice, as it is the third most spoken language in Canada after English and French, with over 600,000 speakers in Canada according to the government:

https://canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/ ... stics.html.

The proposal is not based on percentage of population but historical priority. The 60 languages in question all predate the institution of Canada as a nation and have an ongoing history of speech by peoples subsumed into that national banner and of active attempts at their erasure. On that ground alone they deserve recognition as legitimate languages to conduct business in - a recognition that will rapidly swell the number of translators, renew interest, and increase resource allocation to enabling the survival and day to day use of those languages.

And as a worker of the Federal government, trying to remember the forward extension for the guy that speaks french in our area is hard enough. 60 other languages, and not being able to identify it before transfer? Yeah....

Oh no, is being part of the settler-colonial state inconvenient to you? Keep a directory list at your desk until you learn it.

I suspect this isn't really practical to impliment due to there simply being too many variations (with each community and tribe having their own dialect(possibly even subgroups within those) and holding it as the "one true way" to speak said language).

Morally there's nothing objectionable about and indeed one could argue it's a moral benefit, however the practicality of it is another matter.

I suspect that you'll find, if you dig, that there are standardized orthographies and dialects that have emerged over the last century as tribal boundaries have shifted, populations have been forcibly homogenized, and much of the language has been forced into a semi-artificial state of compression due to the active attempts at genocide their speakers have been subjected to. Further, I suspect you'll find that there are ways to arrive at a negotiated 'official' dialect for the sake of government work - the same thing had to take place for English and Quebecois French, afterall.

Bluntly, I am unsympathetic to any argument against recognizing the priority of surviving Indigenous languages in settler-colonial states that boils down to 'oh well it's not practical'. Settler-colonial states lost the right to complain about practicality in dealing with their domestic subalterns when they invaded them and attempted a genocide, because I'm not particularly convinced that said invasion, dispossession, and genocide was all that practical for those it was carried out against.

The privileged role granted to the language of the settler state is not just a matter of practicality. It is very much a tool of ongoing colonization, filled with political incentives to go unquestioned as the naturally dominant language of the state. The erasure of legitimate claimants to the status of language of state based on territorial history was - and remains - part of a campaign of quite literal genocide. So when the simplest alternative - recognize those languages as just as legitimate as English or French or Spanish or Portugeuse - is dismissed as 'impractical', what is really being said is this: 'It is impractical to try and undo the genocide; let's not even bother'.

[MarxII]

I support this idea, and advocate the adoption of others like it throughout the continent.

My hope is that any weird performative belligerence such as the kind directly above this post does not impede this or similar proposals.

[loomer]

I support this idea, and advocate the adoption of others like it throughout the continent.

My hope is that any weird performative belligerence such as the kind directly above this post does not impede this or similar proposals.

It's funny how disdaining the genocide-contingent status quo is now 'performative belligerence'.

[Broomstick]

While I am a language enthusiast (even if not particularly adept at learning them) and favor preserving languages for their own sake there are real issues with making a large number of different languages all official languages of a nation. It's not insurmountable - there are nations who do it - but issues do exist.

Not the least is that when you have large numbers of languages co-existing together it is very natural for either a creole to emerge or one or two languages becoming lingua francas. Learning the lingua franca gives those speakers an advantage in engaging with other people and over and over again such languages tend to take over from smaller, more local languages. This long pre-dates the modern colonial era - it's why Latin-derieved Romance languages dominate so much of Western Europe, the exceptions being the surviving Celtic languages which are on life support and the Basque isolate - the Finn-Ugaric languages being in Eastern Europe and being another group of survivors of the Indo-European invasion that predated Ancient Rome, another case of one language or a few languages overwhelming the prior languages in an area. And Europe is probably just the most thoroughly documented case of that happening. It also seems the Bantu family of languages expanded through much of Africa, wiping out lots of non-Bantu languages and only a few remnants remaining we lump together as Khoi-San.

So.... in a nation with 60 official languages how do you equally support all of them without having just a few come to dominate when that seems to be a recurring phenomena in history?

Mind, I don't think that doing something like printing government forms in 60 languages is insurmountable - the US Census, when I worked for them in 2010, had its forms available in a LOT of languages/writing systems despite the US having no official language and English being overwhelming dominant. Full Census materials are available in 12 languages, and some support for 59 more, including the Native language Navajo. So it's doable and being done even in a "monolingual" or more arguably (due to the prominence of Spanish in some regions) "bilingual" nation. Locally, some parts of the US do support Native languages - Hawai'i being an official language of the State of Hawaii. So if a very English-dominant language like the US can provide that level of support for so many different languages I'd expect that a nation that deliberately set out to provide support to multiple dozens of languages then that part of the project is entirely doable.

The big problem is getting people to use that language. For a language to live it has to be used for daily life by sufficient numbers of people. All of us in this thread are aware of that. How do you motivate people to do that? How do you encourage and motivate people to use these remnant languages sufficiently to achieve fluency and use them in daily life?

This is a problem I'm most familiar with from my study of Irish - a language which has the advantage of centuries of written history and larger numbers of current speakers than some of the small languages the OP wants to preserve and promote. Ireland has been trying to re-establish Irish as a common and widespread language for several generations now. Welsh is likewise facing similar issues although doing slightly better. The pre-European contact languages the OP talks about all face the same problems as Europe's remnant non-Romance and non-Slavic languages on steroids.

So, again - how do you motivate people to USE these languages sufficiently often for sustained fluency? I agree, it's the right thing to do but I'm at a loss for how to go about doing it effectively.

[loomer]

You work the same processes that every other language restoration and resurrection effort has worked - you foster official use and allocate resources to make that possible, enable surviving speakers to create cultural and practical works relevant to the present, find appropriate standardized orthographies where they're not already available, and begin teaching the language in schools again (to everyone in that school system, where appropriate and possible) while fostering its use in day to day life.

In practical terms, of course English will continue to dominate for the foreseeable future because the process of giving equal footing to the other languages is going to be a slow and often painful one, and it may never be achieved. And that's okay too - the goal is not necessarily to replace English with the other language, but just to give it first official recognition as a legitimate language of business (which is tremendously important as a matter of recognition of nationhood and challenging the unstated hegemonic claim of possession and right that underscores settler-colonial societies) and then to provide the chance for it to survive and possibly flourish. English will probably always survive in Anglo-originated settler-colonial successor states for its utility as a language of international communication (likewise French, Spanish, and Portuguese) but the mere existence of an advantageous lingua franca (or a kriol that emerges out of it) does not require the abandonment of other languages. It is, of course, possible that these languages may still fade away despite the best efforts, and if that happens it will be unfortunate, but there will be a marked difference to the current state of affairs in their decline, which is that they were actively killed off, either to outright extinction or until so wounded that death was seen as inevitable. In a very real sense, official recognition and fostering is part of making good on that crime - even if it fails, it can be part of the process of exposing, exploring, and taking responsibility for that crime and the wounds it continues to inflict.

[Broomstick]

You work the same processes that every other language restoration and resurrection effort has worked - you foster official use and allocate resources to make that possible, enable surviving speakers to create cultural and practical works relevant to the present, find appropriate standardized orthographies where they're not already available, and begin teaching the language in schools again (to everyone in that school system, where appropriate and possible) while fostering its use in day to day life.

My concern is that such efforts have not been tremendously successful, even when such languages are not nearly as oppressed as many Native languages. As a practical matter you have to get buy in by the much larger majority mainstream that these languages and cultures are embedded in.

What would you consider goals and the signposts of those goals? A certain number of speakers? How many speakers does a language need to be self-sustaining? What are the best methods of supporting the language and culture? Has anyone looked into this, seeing which languages manage to survive and which don't? (Having a writing system, I assume, is a major factor.)

[loomer]

You work the same processes that every other language restoration and resurrection effort has worked - you foster official use and allocate resources to make that possible, enable surviving speakers to create cultural and practical works relevant to the present, find appropriate standardized orthographies where they're not already available, and begin teaching the language in schools again (to everyone in that school system, where appropriate and possible) while fostering its use in day to day life.

My concern is that such efforts have not been tremendously successful, even when such languages are not nearly as oppressed as many Native languages. As a practical matter you have to get buy in by the much larger majority mainstream that these languages and cultures are embedded in.

What would you consider goals and the signposts of those goals? A certain number of speakers? How many speakers does a language need to be self-sustaining? What are the best methods of supporting the language and culture? Has anyone looked into this, seeing which languages manage to survive and which don't? (Having a writing system, I assume, is a major factor.)

Very few of those languages also possess the dedicated hard core that most surviving Indigenous languages that aren't already in terminal decline have, which is a vital difference - and those that do are usually in similar situations as domestic subaltern languages that have been deliberately subjected to cultural genocide. In this respect, the oppression forms part of the backbone of restoration - the legitimization of the oppressed language legitimizes the history of the oppressed and their place in national and international society not as subalterns but as fully fledged nations in their own right, and the language itself can function as a political standard and rallying point, which is already taking place - a whole lot of young Indigenous people are learning the language of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers as an act of defiance and healing without these official supports. Beyond that, the 'buy in' is part of making it an official language and teaching it to everyone in the schools from grade 0 to grade 12 alongside English or French (obviously in cases of many, many languages within a state regional differences ought to be respected - e.g. the schools around here would teach Bundjalung's southern dialects (to my enormous joy, one of the local primary schools has started doing so - every kid learns Bundjalung) while those in Western Australia might teach Kija, Noongar, and so on). Normalize speaking and working in the language and the rest follows, whether it's a successful revival, the emergence of a widely spoken kriol, just the arrest of decline, or even an unfortunate failure to arrest and reverse the decline.

As for measuring goals? I could go on all day about the political goals and the demands of justice (which, being my actual job, I already do), but I don't think that's what you meant and I'm not a linguist so I'm hardly the appropriate person to be laying out specific goals and signposts of development around numbers and methodologies. I'm sure if you google you can find plenty of people who are and have done that work for you. A major first step, however, is recognizing the legitimacy of those languages and fostering their continued survival and development through legislation and funding.