With Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent letter to Shawn Alteo, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, the two have plans to reform education on reserves.
The Globe and Mail reports that, “With 30 aboriginal languages close to extinction, the federal government has announced plans to quadruple funds for programs in British Columbia to revitalize those that can be saved and preserve those that will disappear possibly within the next five years.”
As an approach to maintain Aboriginal languages, there will be government funds that will go into the recording and digitizing of Native speakers, creating instructional DVDs for schools, and also sponsoring language camps for youth. There will also be mobile applications for the iTouch, iPhone and iPad that will be developed to help reach out to the younger generation.
Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore announced on Monday at the Museum of Anthropology that, “We all recognize if we do not know where we are from, we do not know where we are going. Language is critical to the use and transmission of cultural identity.”
“The funds will be provided under a national program that receives $5-million annually. A change in the formula for distribution of funds across the country will mean that B.C. will receive $834,000 next year, compared to about $232,000 this year. B.C. is the most linguistically diverse province in the country, with 60 per cent of the aboriginal languages in Canada,” reports the Globe and Mail.
The Aboriginal languages were lost when Aboriginal students were forced to attend residential or labour schools. At these schools, students were not allowed to practice their cultural traditions such as speaking their native language. Over time, in residential schools and after, the language slowly decayed, and created a legacy of Native peoples who do not know how to speak the language of their culture.
Lorna Williams, head of the First Peoples’ Heritage Language and Culture Council says that the distinct culture of the first nations will be hard to understand without the language to describe and provide meaning.
“Right now, it is really challenging to provide support to all the languages. This will ease that.”
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