New project aims to revitalize First Nations languages
Posted November 27, 2017 1:34 pm.
Last Updated November 27, 2017 6:17 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) – A new project is making an attempt to revitalize this country’s First Nations languages by forming a learning and research network.
It’s called NEȾOLṈEW̱, which translates as “one mind, one people” in SENĆOŦEN. It’s an attempt to boost 42 distinct languages that have in many cases fallen out of daily use.
One of the consequences of colonization and the residential school system has been the rapid decline of the use of first nations languages.
But this project, led by Onowa McIvor with UVic’s Department of Indigenous Education and in partnership with Simon Fraser University, aims to bring those languages back into regular use.
“One of the really tangible and main damages that has happened in the way that our country has formed [is the damage to languages], and so it’s a really critical important part of how we can come back together as a country,” says McIvor.
The program is focused on adults who had little chance to learn their traditional languages as children, due to adoption, residential schools or other disconnections from their homelands.
“The whole project is focused on assisting adults and working together with communities that are having real success creating new adult speakers of the language who can then speak the language to their children, become teachers in their community, create immersion programs, create other kinds of programs in their community for others to learn the language,” says McIvor.
The six-year project is funded by a $2.5-million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
