Keeping languages alive matters

When an old person dies, the proverb says, a library burns down. If so, the loss to the world when a language dies out is beyond measure.

Jeru. Ainu. Yuchi. Dumi. All are among the hundreds of languages said by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in recent years to have been on the brink.

In fact, linguists predict that half the 7,000 languages spoken on the planet will be extinct by century’s end.

Aluki Kotierk, president of the Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Inuit representative body for treaty rights and negotiations, doesn’t want that happening in this country. Quite the opposite.

Kotierk told The Canadian Press recently that Canada should mark the international decade of Indigenous languages that begins this year by designating Inuktitut as one of its official languages.

Her timing might be auspicious.

It’s been an encouraging season lately for Indigenous languages, especially Inuktitut. The author Kenn Harper has said that Indigenous is “in” and Inuktitut is “cool.” He might be right.

In 2019, Canada passed the Indigenous Languages Act to provide for long-term funding of First Nations languages and establish a commissioner to oversee implementation.

The federal agency is meant to protect and promote such languages as Cree, Ojibwa, Oji-Cree, Mohawk, Mi’kmaq, Michif (the native tongue of some Métis) and Inuktitut, among dozens that are still spoken in Canada.

Through the commission, funding has already been provided for such initiatives as a Cree language-learning app and a virtualreality video game that teaches Blackfoot.

Last year, when Mary Simon was installed as the country’s first governor general of Inuk background, Canadians seemed delighted that Indigenous rituals and language were included in her swearing-in.

In his mandate letter to Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez in December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed the minister to work with Indigenous leaders to fully implement the act and to “preserve, promote and revitalize Indigenous languages in Canada.”

More than that, the Canadian public — whose anger over the discovery of unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools was credited with motivating Ottawa to negotiate a $40-billion settlement for discrimination in child and family services — seems supportive of substantive acts of reconciliation.

Globalization, by its force and scope, has threatened local languages. For a much longer time, colonialism, by design, sought to extinguish local languages as a means of control.

The suppression of language was a key feature of Canada’s long-standing policy of assimilation of Indigenous peoples.

The decline in Indigenous languages was a tragedy of Canada’s making and, as we have said before, it is the federal government’s responsibility to reverse things.

It’s been encouraging to hear the support of Canadians for bold, tangible acts of reconciliation.

It’s been encouraging to see the determination of Indigenous communities to preserve and revitalize their languages.

Undoing the damage and supporting those efforts with adequate investment will be the work of generations. But it’s work that pays off.

Research suggests the learning of traditional languages mitigates some of the ills suffered in Indigenous communities, improves education outcomes and overall well-being.

The granting of official language status, the right to schooling and public services in ancestral tongues, remain complicated projects. But there can be no denying the justice and value of the cause.

The suppression of language was a key feature of Canada’s long-standing policy of assimilation of Indigenous peoples