9/4/2023 0 Comments Languages lost to timeLife outside Indigenous communities is thus dominated by English, with Indigenous languages being relegated to the less essential status of traditional cultural markers. Those who are able to pass through secondary education then face additional challenges in seeking higher education, where the pursuit of a degree forces them to relocate further to cities that operate almost entirely in English, creating pressure to either assimilate or risk discrimination. In exchange for higher quality education, however, they give up their local community and home environment as well as the opportunity to speak their native language. Some students in Nunavik choose to leave in order to attend secondary schools in Thunder Bay, where there is an institutionalized homestay program. Secondary education is less accessible to Indigenous students, who often have to travel hours to attend school. Today, Indigenous communities rely heavily on the federal government for basic services, such as education, which places English in an important position for the younger generation. All of these events contributed to a precedent that makes it exceedingly difficult for Indigenous communities to foster the cultural continuity that is necessary for language preservation. Reserve laws only exacerbated the loss of Indigenous independence with the forcible removal of communities from their traditional land, undermining the social and economic welfare of these populations. That process continued into the 60s Scoop, a mass movement in which Indigenous children were taken to white foster families and, in many cases, never saw their birth parents again. Indigenous children were first removed from their parents to be sent to residential schools, where they were forcibly separated from their communities and distanced from their culture. This belief has impacted Indigenous peoples’ ability to impart and preserve their culture and language to this day.įorced familial separation is a hallmark of Canadian colonial practices that continues today. Residential schools were a defining moment in a broader loss of Indigenous sovereignty, as it cemented into federal policy the belief that Indigenous peoples were not competent in caring for themselves. When it became evident to parents that residential schools were not providing their children with better lives and were instead causing for trauma, illness, and even death, they were told that this was “simply the price that Aboriginal people had to pay as part of the process of becoming civilized.” The message from the Canadian government was that even a system that tore families apart and harmed children, both physically and mentally, was better than what Indigenous parents would be able to provide. Government officials removed Indigenous children from their parents on the pretense that the children would benefit from assimilating into white Canadian culture through placement in these residential schools. From 1831 until 1996, the implementation of residential schools prevented Indigenous peoples from parenting, educating, and passing on their native language to their children. While there are more than 70 Indigenous languages currently spoken in Canada, they are largely endangered, as the majority of them maintain fewer than 1000 fluent speakers. A History of Language Suppressionįor centuries, Canadian government policies have jeopardized Indigenous languages. In Canada, the government has been largely responsible for the decline of Canada’s Indigenous languages-yet, there may still be hope for them to be revitalized. As Indigenous languages go extinct, so too do the culture and history that they carry with them. While they differ in setting, culture, and phonetics, one aspect that most dead Indigenous languages share is that they perished as a result of colonization and the subsequent rise of international languages. Others had evolved in the leafy greenery of coastal Australia. Some of the languages that have already disappeared were Inuit languages, spoken in the far reaches of the Arctic. Every two weeks, an Indigenous language dies.
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