Embodied in Aboriginal languages is our unique relationship to the Creator, our attitudes, beliefs, values and the fundamental notion of what is truth … Language is the principal means by which culture is accumulated, shared and transmitted from generation to generation. The key to identity and retention of culture is one’s ancestral language.
—Elder Eli Taylor, Sioux Valley First Nation1
F or over a hundred years, Canada’s residential schools took Aboriginal children away from their parents, their families, and their communities for the purpose of destroying their connection to their traditional cultures and languages. The intent, as acknowledged by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his historic apology on June 8, 2008, was to “kill the Indian in the child.” Exercising harsh and often humiliating forms of discipline, punishment, and deprivation, those in charge of the schools repeatedly told the children that their language and their culture was worthless and evil—in the words of Canada’s first prime minister, “savage.”
The churches and the Canadian government believed that Aboriginal children should live their lives in Euro-Canadian cultures, speaking only English or, to a much lesser extent, French. To this end, they generally prohibited the use of Aboriginal languages both in classrooms and in the daily life of the students. Students who spoke their native language outside the classroom were often punished or ridiculed.
Indian Affairs appears to have had no other policy on the use of language in the schools beyond its requirement that English and French were to be the only two languages of instruction and the only two languages to be taught in the schools.2 The government simply thought the languages were disappearing and would be of no interest or value to Aboriginal children in the future.
The schools were left to improvise their own policies. Those policies and their enforcement varied significantly. At the Anglican school at Moose Factory, Ontario, Billy Diamond, who went on to serve for many years as chief of the Grand Council of the Crees of Québec, recalled that in the 1950s, the punishment for speaking Cree was having one’s mouth washed out with soap.3 Jane Willis, who attended residential school in the 1940s and 1950s, recalled how the opening message from the principal at the Anglican school in Fort George, Québec, stressed that from then on, the students were to speak English in the school, since they were there to learn new ways. In practice, students refused to abide by this rule. They avoided punishment by refusing to speak Cree or English when the teachers were around, and speaking Cree among themselves.4 When Isabelle Knockwood’s mother first took her to the Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia, they encountered a young Aboriginal girl in the school parlour. When Knockwood’s mother began to speak to her in Mi’kmaq, the girl responded, shyly, in English. It was then explained to Mrs. Knockwood that it was not permitted to speak Mi’kmaq in the school.5 According to Albert Canadien, at Fort Providence in the Northwest Territories in the 1950s, once students had learned a little English, they were forbidden to speak Slavey (Dene).6 Raphael Ironstand wrote in his memoirs how, shortly after he entered the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school in the 1950s, a number of girls had their heads shaved: “Even though they wore scarves and toques to hide their heads, the tears were streaming down their faces. They were so embarrassed, they kept their heads bowed and eyes looking at the floor. It turned out that their crime had been speaking their native dialect to each other.”7 When James Roberts became the first Aboriginal administrator of the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, residence in 1973, he remarked that when he had attended the school as a boy, he had not liked the fact that he and his fellow students “were not allowed to speak their own native language.”8 These examples make it clear that in schools across Canada, children were told that it violated school policy to speak their own language.
The rejection of Aboriginal languages and cultures—the belief systems, values, laws, spiritual ceremonies, and ways of life of Aboriginal people—was based on two distinct and separate principles: first, the European belief that Aboriginal people had no culture and were ‘savages’ living in a state of nature; and second, the belief that the distinctive Aboriginal race needed to be eliminated so that they would be no different from other Canadians.
While the children taken to the schools tried to retain as much of their languages and cultures as they could, the multigenerational battle waged against them was too hard to resist. While initially Survivors could return to communities where their languages and cultures were still alive and vibrant, with each successive generation of Survivors, there was a greater weakening of community cultural and linguistic strength. More often than not, the schools prevailed. Aboriginal students were forced to abandon their languages and cultural practices. They became alienated from their families, their communities, and ultimately from themselves. This damage was passed down through the generations, as former students found themselves unable or unwilling to teach their own children Aboriginal languages and cultural ways.
Many of the residential school Survivors who spoke to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have stressed the pain caused to them from this loss of their very identity. It is their stories that have guided the work of the Commission. In the words of Elder Shirley Williams, “Language and culture cannot be separate from each other—if they are, the language only becomes a tool, a thing … Our language and culture are our identity and tell us who we are, where we came from and where we are going.”9
In this chapter, the Survivors explain how the loss of languages led to a loss of identity and ultimately brought Aboriginal people face to face with the destruction of their cultures. The loss of identity cast children into a state of confusion over what was right and good in their lives.
The chapter examines the current threats to the survival of Aboriginal languages, and looks at why the loss of Aboriginal language, identity, and culture is so important to non-Aboriginal Canadians. It will also examine the failure of the Canadian government to support the preservation of Aboriginal languages despite their protected status under the Constitution and international agreements. The final part of this chapter will address what has been done and what still needs to be done to preserve Aboriginal languages and cultures.
In our Calls to Action, the Commission will assert that a multi-pronged approach to Aboriginal language preservation—if implemented, honourably resourced, and sustained—can begin the promise of reconciliation with Survivors and their families, people who, through numerous generations, still bear the scars and the losses of the residential schools.
The punishment of speaking Mi’kmaq began on our first day at school, but the punishment has continued all our lives as we try to piece together who we are and what the world means to us with a language many of us had to re-learn as adults.
—Isabelle Knockwood, Survivor of Shubenacadie Residential School10
The talk you took away.
When I was a little girl
At Shubenacadie School.
—Rita Joe, Survivor of Shubenacadie Residential School,
“I Lost My Talk”11
Thousands of children were moved into residential schools at a very young age. When Nellie Trapper went to Horden Hall in Moose Factory, Ontario, she was six years old. She recalled, “I just followed everybody around ’cause I didn’t understand what they were telling me to do; just followed the crowd … There was a lot of stuff that I got in trouble for, and I didn’t know why ’cause I didn’t understand what they were telling me to do, or, because I only spoke Cree.”12
Life in residential schools was both confusing and frightening. Greg Rainville was sent to the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school. He remembered,
I was punished because the nuns would get frustrated with you when they talk to you in French and English, and you’re not knowing what they’re talking about, and you’re pulled around by the ear, and whatnot, and slapped on the back of the head, and stuff like that. And I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. No matter what, I tried to do good, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and they couldn’t understand what I was saying, but I was punished.13
When the children had their languages stripped from them, they not only lost the ability to communicate with one another, they were forced to question if what they knew, and if what they had been taught since birth had any value at all. John Tootoosis, who attended the Delmas, Saskatchewan, school, said that for Aboriginal children, the residential school experience was
like being put between two walls in a room and left hanging in the middle. On one side are all the things he learned from his people and their way of life that was being wiped out, and on the other side are the white man’s ways which he could never fully understand since he never had the right amount of education and could not be part of it. There he is, hanging in the middle of two cultures and he is not a white man and he is not an Indian.14
According to social anthropologist Wade Davis, culture “is not decoration or artifice, the songs we sing or even the prayers we chant. It is a blanket of comfort that gives meaning to lives.”15 This section examines some of the devastating effects of taking away that “blanket of comfort” of Aboriginal cultures and languages from the children who attended residential schools, and the intergenerational effects of such deprivations.
The statements of the Survivors are our best guide to understanding what was lost, or stolen, or deemed “evil” in the residential school system. The culture that the children were forced to abandon covered everything from the basics of food and clothing and family to their essential understanding of home and history to the most sacred—their stories and their spirituality.
Mary Siemans explained the connection between language and culture:
Our Dogrib language … identifies us as a people in a unique culture within the land we occupy. Our language holds our culture, our perspective, our history, and our inheritance. What type of people we are, where we came from, what land we claim, and all our legends are based on the language we speak. Our culture depends on our language, because it contains the unique words that describe our way of life. It describes name places for every part of our land that our ancestors travelled on … Rules which govern our lives bring stability to our communities, and our feast days, which bring people together, are all inter-related within our language. Losing our language will not only weaken us as a people but will diminish our way of life because it depend so much on our language.16
Doris Young speaking at the Commission’s National Event in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan remembers the way students were forced to dress:
They took away our clothes, and gave us clothes that, that everybody else [wore], we all looked alike, our hair was all the same, cut us into bangs, and, and straight short, straight hair up to our ears. And there was our shoes, they took away our moccasins, and gave us shoes, which I was not, I was just a baby, I had, didn’t actually wear shoes; we wore moccasins.17
Martin Nicholas was sent to school with new, handmade clothing. A “buckskin jacket, beaded with fringes … My mom did beautiful work, and I was really proud of my clothes.” But the moccasins, pants, and jacket she made were taken from him on his first day at school and never returned. He recalled, “that was the only one time I wore them.”18
The Survivors shared many painful memories about the way their culture was stripped away from them. Sarah McLeod spoke at the community hearing in Kamloops, British Columbia, about the residential school attack on Aboriginal spirituality:
When I got here I was so proud of my totem pole ... and I showed it to the nun. I said, “Look what I got for my birthday. I really like my totem.” She went, “Ah!” She said, “You throw that away. Throw it away right now. Put it in the garbage right now.” I looked at her. I said, “But that’s my birthday present.” “No, that’s no good. That’s the devil seeing that totem pole. It’s out. Devil, can’t you see all the devil in there? You throw it away right now!” And she made me throw it in the garbage, and it was, I didn’t know, I said to myself, “Oh, my gosh. All this time I was, I was hugging this devil?” You know I didn’t know that.... I never forgot it. I still, deep in my heart, I still think it’s always something that I shouldn’t have thrown away. It’s just how much they, they tried to take culture away from us.19
Going beyond the condemnation of childhood basics like food and clothing the students were further encouraged to adopt the racist attitudes of the schools. Archie Hyacinthe recalled his time at the St. Mary’s Residential School in Kenora, Ontario:
The sad part of it was, we used to watch cowboys and Indian movies on TV, black and white TV. We would be cheering for the cowboys, you know. Here we were saying to the Indians because “they’re losers,” you know. See, this is what the school did to you. They taught you how to be, you know, turn against your own people, your own culture.20
The Commission heard time and again the wrenching memories of children who found that they couldn’t even go home anymore. Mary Courchene spoke at the community hearing in Pine Creek, Manitoba, of how she felt when she returned to her parents’ home after a year in residential school:
I looked at my dad, I looked at my mom, I looked at my dad again. You know what? I hated them. I just absolutely hated my own parents. Not because I thought they abandoned me; I hated their brown faces. I hated them because they were Indians … This is what we were told everyday; “You savage. Your ancestors are no good.”21
Hubert Nanacowop attended Our Lady of the Snows School in Berens River, Manitoba. He recalled, “I always thought being an Indian was just like being next to a pig, and that’s the way they used to call us. And I couldn’t talk, talk my own language, which is Anishinaabe ... We had all kinds of troubles with that.”22
Richard Kaiyogana, Sr., attended the Coppermine tent hostel in the Northwest Territories. He told the Commission, “Okay, why not think like a white man? Talk like a white man? Eat like a white man … so I don’t have to get strapped anymore.”23
Agnes Mills spoke to the Commission at a sharing circle in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. She explained,
And one of the things that residential school did for me, I really regret, is it made me ashamed of who I was … And I wanted to be white so bad, and the worst thing I ever did was I was ashamed of my mother, that honourable woman, because she couldn’t speak English, she never went to school, and they told us that we used to go home to her on Saturdays, and they told us that we couldn’t talk Gwich’in to her and, and she couldn’t, like couldn’t communicate. And my sister was the one that had the nerve to tell her. “We can’t talk Loucheux to you, they told us not to.”24
Betsy Olson remembers how hard it was for her family to welcome her home: “Mom had to buy white man’s food to feed me ’cause I couldn’t eat our, our way of eating back home. I couldn’t eat soup. I couldn’t eat fish. I couldn’t eat bannock. Couldn’t eat nothing … Mom had to get extra money to try and buy extra food just for me.”25
Eva Lepage is an Inuk woman who attended the Churchill Vocational Centre in Manitoba. She spoke to the Commission at the Atlantic National Event:
I was not accepted by white people because of my colour. My own people did not accept me either… I’ve been hurt a lot by, by white people but I also been hurt a lot by my own people because people hurting so much they hurt each other, and they don’t see it. I’m not in my community either. For thirty years I live where I didn’t grow up, so all my family relatives are not, never hardly are around me.26
Roy Thunder and his friends at the Shingwauk Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie had to, quite literally, battle for their identities. He remembered, “Reserve kids ... were making fun of us ’cause we were talking English ... There were times, too ... they wanted to fight us ... because they thought we were, you know, white kids.”27
Sabina Hunter grew up in Goose Bay: “At eighteen I left Labrador with no intention of coming back … When I lived outside people thought I was Oriental and so I would use that. I would take advantage of that. I didn’t want to be Inuk. And during that time I drank a lot. I was not a person to be proud of.”28
Rosemary Paul spoke to the Commission in Halifax, Nova Scotia: “They made fun of me because I couldn’t speak Mi’kmaq and to this day I still try to fit in and I still, like, consider myself an outsider. I mean, I can still go to my reserve and everybody, you know, hugs and kisses me, but I still consider myself an outsider.”29
Professor Lorena Sekwan Fontaine is from the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba. She explained,
My stepfather said he never spoke Cree to me partially because of the shame he felt. At first he never articulated the source of the shame, but a few years ago he said it was a result of his residential school experiences. He often spoke to me with a heavy heart, saying, “there are so many things I cannot express to you in English because there are only Cree words to describe what I am feeling.”30
Henry “Curly” Ruck told the Commission that his mother attended the Elkhorn Residential School in Manitoba and consequently had a very limited understanding of Aboriginal culture:
She phoned me one day and asked me if she could come over. It was on a Sunday morning.… But I told her I couldn’t do it that Sunday because we were going to a sweat. And all she said to me was, “What?” I said, “We’re going to a sweat.” She says, “What’s that?” And I said, “A sweat lodge. We’re going to go sit in a sweat lodge.” And she said, “What the hell is that?” That’s why to me … she lost everything. She lost her culture. She lost everything. That residential school took everything away from her.31
Listening to the voices of the Survivors, it is difficult to measure how much was lost when their languages and cultures were so systematically and savagely suppressed. Many Survivors and their descendants have a huge sense of loss and either a sense of anger or sadness about their loss. Such Survivors lead the cultural and language revitalization movements that are happening across the country. Others, who have accepted and embraced the Christian doctrines imposed on them at the schools, reject the value of the traditions and languages of their own people. These Survivors sometimes actively fight against cultural revitalization. Tension and turmoil often result between these groups when they exist in the same community. This friction too needs to be seen as one of the legacies of residential schools.
Culture and language are closely connected not only to a sense of self but also to physical well-being. Positive cultural identity has been linked to resilience and good mental health among minorities. Cultural loss has been recognized as a significant determinant of health in the Aboriginal community.32
In its 2010 review of the health of Aboriginal languages in BC, the First People’s Heritage, Language and Cultures Council concluded,
The loss of language is directly related to the troubling health issues many First Nations are facing today. Knowledge of one’s language is related to physical, mental and spiritual health. It is an expression of ways of life, ways of thinking, and cultural understanding. Language revitalization plays a vital role in community growth, healing, education, development, strong families and reconnection to the past. A healthy language means healthy individuals, healthy communities, and contributing members to society.33
The First Nations–controlled Regional Longitudinal Health Survey has concluded that “the closer a people are to their Nation’s ‘roots’ and their spiritual beliefs and practices, the higher the levels of health and self-esteem found within that community.”34 The attack on Aboriginal languages and cultures at residential schools was also an attack on the very health of Aboriginal students. The connection between wellness and culture will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter on health.
In the 1990 Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs report titled “You Took My Talk”: Aboriginal Literacy and Empowerment, Sala Padlayat, director of the Salluit Adult Education Centre, eloquently describes the relationship between mother tongue literacy and self-esteem. She explains,
I truly believe that my strength, my feeling of self-worth as an Inuk is in part because I had access to a form of communication, our written language, that is uniquely our own.… Not all of our young people are as fortunate to have the support I received from my family. When alien ways are pressed on them, they cannot differentiate between what is real and what is superficial, what is essential and what in reality is trivial. They are confused, lost, bitter, because they feel abandoned.35
Positive cultural identity has the power to protect as well as to heal. Strikingly, researchers in BC found that significantly lower suicide rates are correlated with those bands in which a majority of members have a conversational knowledge of an Aboriginal language. Correlation does not imply causation, but the researchers concluded “that indigenous language use, as a marker of cultural persistence, is a strong predictor of health and well being in Canada’s Aboriginal communities.”36 There is also evidence that the use of an Aboriginal language at home is positively associated with the success of children living off reserve at school.37 Survivors who struggle with addictions, mental health issues, and imprisonment can benefit from greater engagement with Aboriginal languages and culture. Recognizing the connection between culture and health, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) observed, “it is often the most distressed and alienated Aboriginal people who find the greatest healing power in the reaffirmation (or rediscovery) of their cultures and spirituality.”38
In 1994, an Assembly of First Nations study of the impact of residential schools noted that “language is necessary to define and maintain a world view. For this reason, some First Nation Elders to this day will say that knowing or learning a native language is basic to any deep understanding of a First Nations way of life, to being a First Nation person. For them, a First Nation world is quite simply not possible without its own language.”39 This same report quoted Bernie Francis, a Mi’kmaq linguistic consultant, who stated, “the greatest part of our spirituality is embedded in our language. That is why it was attacked with such vigor.”40
The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples similarly noted the connection between Aboriginal languages and what it called a “distinctive world view,” rooted in the stories of ancestors and the environment:
For Aboriginal people, the threat that their languages could disappear is more than the prospect that they will have to acquire new instruments for communicating their daily needs and building a sense of community. It is a threat that their distinctive worldview, the wisdom of their ancestors and their ways of being human could be lost as well. And, as they point out, if the languages of this continent are lost, there is nowhere else they can be heard again.41
RCAP added that Aboriginal languages are a “tangible emblem of group identity” that can provide “the individual a sense of security and continuity with the past ... Maintenance of the language and group identity has both a social-emotional and a spiritual purpose.”42
The deep cultural and spiritual significance of Aboriginal languages was also reflected in some of the first principles that guided an important 2005 Task Force on Aboriginal Languages. The task force included speakers of the Michif, Secwepemc, Mohawk, Inuktitut, Cree, Plains Cree, Swampy Cree, Saulteaux, Ojibway, and Algonquin, and drew on a Circle of Experts. The task force articulated its core principles thusly:
We believe First Nation, Inuit and Métis languages embody the past and the future. To enter into a relationship with our ancestors we must speak our languages and by doing so we honour their spirits. However, we also adapt our languages to new environments, new situations and new technologies.43
Aboriginal languages have survived. But only barely. Very few Aboriginal languages are in good health today. The largest and “most viable” languages are Inuktitut, Cree, and Ojibway, but all Aboriginal languages spoken in Canada are considered vulnerable to extinction.44 In 1998, the Assembly of First Nations declared a state of emergency regarding First Nation languages, and called on Canada to act immediately to recognize, officially and legally, the First Nation languages of Canada, and to make a commitment to provide the resources necessary to reverse First Nation language loss and prevent their extinction.45 That call was never answered. Since that time, things have become critically worse. In the 2011 census, only 14.5% of the Aboriginal population reported that their first language learned was an Aboriginal language.46 In the previous census in 2006, 19% of those who identified as Aboriginal had reported an Aboriginal language as their first language learned, and a decade earlier, in the 1996 census, the figure was 26%. Although some of this decline may reflect the growth in the number of people now identifying as Aboriginal, especially off reserve, the rapid decline in those who learn an Aboriginal language as a first language is dramatic and significant.
In the 2006 census, 21% of those who reported an Aboriginal identity also reported the ability to conduct a conversation in an Aboriginal language; in the 2011 census, this proportion declined to 17.2%, a drop of 4% in just five years.47 Again, some of this decline may be explained by the growth in the overall Aboriginal population, but there are plenty of consistent, disturbing signs that Aboriginal languages are in danger of disappearing completely.
There remains great diversity in language use among Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. Fewer than 5% of Métis people speak an Aboriginal language, although about 50% report that keeping, learning, or relearning their language is important to them. Some of the languages spoken by Métis people, such as Cree and Ojibway, are in good health, but others, such as Michif, are spoken by fewer than one thousand people.48
Nearly two-thirds of Inuit speak their own language, compared to 22.4% of First Nations people. Although the Inuit have the highest percentage of Indigenous language speakers, there are signs of decline there as well. In the 2011 census, 63.3% of their population spoke an Inuit language, down from 68.8% in the 2006 census.
There are also striking regional differences, with much lower rates of language use by Inuit in urban areas as well as in the western, Inuvialuit region of the Northwest Territories, where church-run residential schooling, commercial whaling, and fur trading had more than a century-long history.49
Canada prides itself on its official bilingualism and is admired internationally for this policy. Yet there is no comparable policy of official trilingualism to equitably honour and encompass the mother tongues of the country’s third founders, the Aboriginal peoples of Canada.
The Supreme Court of Canada has interpreted section 35 of the Canadian Constitution (which recognizes Aboriginal and Treaty Rights) as protecting those Aboriginal rights that “were integral to the distinctive culture of the specific aboriginal group” prior to European contact.50 There can be no doubt that Aboriginal languages and cultural practices fall within the scope of such constitutional protections.51 The practice of Aboriginal languages was a pre-existing, distinctive, and continuous practice that should be recognized as an existing Aboriginal right under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982.52
In the words of Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in the case R v. Mitchell, “European settlement did not terminate the interests of aboriginal peoples arising from their historical occupation and use of the land. To the contrary, aboriginal interests and customary laws were presumed to survive the assertion of sovereignty, and were absorbed into the common law as rights.”53 As a result, Aboriginal language rights continue to exist as part of the Aboriginal rights protected within Canada’s guiding law, the Canadian Constitution. They have survived unless, as Chief Justice McLachlin wrote in R. v. Mitchell, “(1) they were incompatible with the Crown’s assertion of sovereignty, (2) they were surrendered voluntarily via the treaty process, or (3) the government extinguished them.”54 Because Aboriginal languages do not threaten the Crown’s assertion of sovereignty, and were not surrendered through Treaties, and were not extinguished by the government, the rights to these language practices, customs, and traditions continue to this day.
It can also be argued that because Treaty talks were conducted in both English and Aboriginal languages, both parties assumed that they would continue to communicate in a similar manner. Given that Aboriginal peoples owned the land by virtue of their historic use and occupancy, and exercised governance powers prior to European arrival, Treaties should be fairly understood as a grant of rights from First Nations to the Crown, leaving First Nations to still hold any and all rights not granted to the Crown, including language rights.55 This obviously leaves broad grounds for Aboriginal language rights to be recognized and affirmed within section 35(1) of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court of Canada, in the course of interpreting French and English minority language rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, has clearly stressed the importance of language as part of culture. The Court has written,
Language is so intimately related to the form and content of expression that there cannot be true freedom of expression by means of language if one is prohibited from using the language of one’s choice. Language is not merely a means or medium of expression; it colours the content and meaning of expression. It is a means by which a people may express its cultural identity. It is also the means by which one expresses one’s personal identity and sense of individuality.56
Finally, section 22 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that the recognition of French and English language rights in the Charter does not take away “from any legal or customary right or privilege acquired or enjoyed either before or after the coming into force of this Charter with respect to any language that is not English or French.”57 This section of the Charter provides support for the idea that Aboriginal language litigation could be successful under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.
In interpreting Aboriginal and treaty rights under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, the Supreme Court of Canada has stressed the relation of those rights to the preservation of distinct Aboriginal cultures.58 The Commission is convinced that Aboriginal languages are an integral part of Aboriginal culture, no less than English and French languages are to those cultures, in that they help define how Aboriginal peoples govern and educate themselves and relate to their environment.
13) We call upon the federal government to acknowledge that Aboriginal rights include Aboriginal language rights.
The residential school system was based primarily on the racist belief in the superiority of settlers and the inferiority of Aboriginal cultures. Yet, despite the frequent use of various forms of punishment, students resisted attempts to prohibit their use of Aboriginal languages in many ways. In 1887, Reverend T. Clarke of the Battleford Industrial School complained that “We have experienced a great difficulty in inducing the boys and girls to speak English among themselves in every day life.”59 In 1938, an inspector of the Sandy Bay school was still complaining that students “will only learn English by using it, and using it as continuously as possible,” including in the playgrounds and at meals.60
Canadian anthropologist Diamond Jenness, in a 1962 lecture at Waterloo Lutheran University, lamented “that very few of our Canadian Eskimos have acquired more than the feeblest smattering of English,” and he observed that they would be unable to cope in the South “unless we appoint ourselves their guardians and watch over them during the first months or year of their sojourn” while they mastered English.61 These assimilationist views did not go unchallenged, but they remained dominant in the administration of the residential schools.62
In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples stressed the importance of allowing Aboriginal nations to take steps in accordance with their own conditions and priorities to preserve Aboriginal languages. RCAP also stressed that, in part because of the residential school experience, both the Government of Canada and the churches had an obligation to engage in “restorative justice.” The report also stated that “Aboriginal languages have been undermined by government action ... [and] because churches have played a critical part in the destruction of languages, we consider that practical support for the restoration of the languages would be a highly appropriate reconciliatory gesture.”63 RCAP recommended the creation of an Aboriginal languages foundation that would be endowed with a total of $100 million. The foundation board would have a majority of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis members, and would “support language initiatives undertaken or endorsed by Aboriginal nations and their communities.”64
The initial reaction to RCAP’S language recommendations was positive. In Gathering Strength, the Government of Canada’s response to the RCAP, the government committed to working with Aboriginal people to establish programs to preserve, protect, and teach Aboriginal languages.65 A new approach to language preservation was launched in 1998.66
The long-term goal of the program was to increase the number of Aboriginal language speakers, with an emphasis on language acquisition and retention in the home.67 Starting in 1998, funding of $5 million per year was administered by the Assembly of First Nations, the Métis National Council, and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.68 Leaving aside the adequacy of the dollar amounts, this approach recognized that a government-controlled approach did not respect the diversity of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples, especially given the diversity of Aboriginal languages. The approach also respected RCAP’S view that language policy should be a key component of Aboriginal self-determination. It would mean that the Aboriginal organizations, although funded by Canada, would themselves be responsible and held accountable by their members for the ways they devoted resources to the urgent task of language preservation.
Unfortunately, Canada no longer pursues such a nation-to-nation approach. The present approach is based on federal administration of heritage subsidies. In 2006, the federal government declined to use the $160 million that had been set aside for the creation of an Aboriginal Languages and Culture Centre and a national language strategy.69 Instead, the government committed $5 million per year “permanent funding” for the Aboriginal Languages Initiative.70 Aboriginal language initiatives are now delivered by the Department of Canadian Heritage on a project-by-project basis. The heritage subsidy approach suggests that Aboriginal languages will, at best, be preserved with other relics of the past.
Even if one were to set aside the significant reduction in funding, it is important to understand that the Aboriginal Language Initiative made matters much worse. It is a program of government-administered subsidies. It is not based on the notion of respectful nation-to-nation relations between Canada and Aboriginal peoples; nor does it trust Aboriginal people to make decisions for themselves about how to allocate those few resources and how to administer programs. Evaluations have identified gaps in funding, especially for Métis people, urban, and non-status First Nations people, and urban Inuit.71 These groups include many former students of residential schools and their children and grandchildren.
The Aboriginal Language Initiative budget remains $5 million per year, just as it was more than seventeen years ago in 1998 when the program was initiated. Given inflation, this funding has dramatically decreased in real terms.72 In 2013–14, this budget was used for eighty projects, which were funded by way of “contribution agreements” with national, provincial, and regional Aboriginal organizations. ALI funding is available for programs that are designed and delivered by Aboriginal people, but only on a short-term project basis.73 The Aboriginal Languages Initiative is financially unfit for its purpose, and structurally flawed.
Apart from the Aboriginal Languages Initiative, the only other significant programs for language preservation are the Canada–Territorial Language Accords ($4.1 million annual budget). These support territorial government-directed Aboriginal language services and community projects in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. In Yukon, Canada provides $5 million for language revitalization and preservation projects through transfer agreements with ten of the eleven self-governing Yukon First Nations.74 This follows RCAP’S recommended approach that language policy should be included as a matter of self-government wherever possible. However, Yukon receives more money than the NWT and Nunavut combined, even though Yukon has a smaller Aboriginal population.
Thus, Canada spends roughly $14 million annually across Canada for the preservation and revitalization of Aboriginal languages, through the Aboriginal Languages Initiative, Territorial Accords, and transfer agreements. By way of comparison, the Official Languages Program for English and French spent over $350 million in 2013–14 for the promotion of linguistic duality and the development of official-language minority communities across Canada.75
Over the last several years, Aboriginal programming within the Department of Canadian Heritage has become smaller and less prominent. There were once fifteen different Aboriginal programs managed independently, but they were all consolidated into the Aboriginal Peoples’ Program in 2005.76 Since then a significant portion of such programs were transferred to the oversight of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.77 In April 2012, Canadian Heritage dispensed with its Aboriginal Affairs Branch altogether and moved the remaining ten Aboriginal programs (including ALI) into the Citizen Participation Branch.78
The profile of the Aboriginal Peoples’ Program has become increasingly diminished in recent years. This is a betrayal of prior commitments, including commitments that were presented as part of Canada’s response to both the residential school litigation and settlement. The preservation of Aboriginal languages should not be a part of the Canadian Department of Heritage. Such an approach does little credit to Canada’s legal and moral duties towards Aboriginal peoples, and does little to make reparations for the forced assimilation of Aboriginal people in residential schools.
The Commission concludes that since the settlement of the residential school litigation in 2006, federal government policy has done little to repair the losses of Aboriginal languages and culture; in fact, the consolidations and cutbacks are a betrayal of the residential school Survivors. The consequent failure to protect increasingly fragile Aboriginal languages renders hollow Canada’s 2008 apology.
The Commission concludes that the Government of Canada must abandon its tightly controlled model of program-based heritage subsidies, and instead provide sustainable resources to recognize that the Indigenous peoples of Canada have language rights tied to their protected Aboriginal rights, including their rights to self-determination.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission believes that federal legislation is necessary for the government to recognize its constitutional obligations with respect to Aboriginal languages. The Commission is well aware that such legislation in itself will not be sufficient to revitalize Aboriginal languages, yet there is a danger that such legislation may be presented or viewed as sufficient. An Aboriginal Languages Act could takes steps to create and facilitate conditions within Aboriginal communities that would enable them to develop the types of necessary language initiatives discussed in other parts of this chapter. To ensure that such steps were taken, Parliament could create requirements enforceable in a legal forum such as a tribunal or before a commission, which would give force to these initiatives. Parliament could restrict the distribution of federal funds based on the condition that Aboriginal language initiatives are developed and supported by local communities.
There are precedents for such federal legislation. In 1990, the United States Congress enacted the Native American Languages Act.79 Section 101 provided that “the status of the cultures and languages of Native Americans is unique and the United States has the responsibility to act together with Native Americans to ensure the survival of these unique cultures and languages.” It also recognized that “the traditional languages of native Americans are an integral part of their cultures and identities and form the basic medium for the transmission, and thus survival, of Native American cultures, literatures, histories, religions, political institutions, and values.” It recognized that the “lack of clear, comprehensive, and consistent Federal policy on treatment of Native American languages … has often resulted in acts of suppression and extermination of Native American languages and cultures.”80
The 1990 Native American Languages Act also declared in section 104 that it was “the policy of the United States to preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages,” including placing Indigenous languages “where appropriate” in school curricula and allowing exceptions to teacher certification programs where they would “hinder the employment of qualified teachers who teach in Native American languages, and to encourage State and territorial governments to make similar exceptions.”81
A Canadian version of this act, borrowing from Canada’s Official Languages Act, could also establish a commissioner of Aboriginal languages. The commissioner would be appointed through a process determined in consultation with Aboriginal groups. The commissioner would have the power to report on and draw attention to the health of Canada’s Aboriginal languages, to provide guidance to Aboriginal communities in the preservation of their languages, and to educate non-Aboriginal Canadians about Aboriginal languages. This is not an original concept. New Zealand’s Mãori Languages Act creates a commission with such powers related to the promotion of that Indigenous language.82
The auditor general of Canada has written about the federal government’s failure to create clarity about the service levels First Nations receive. In his 2011 status report, he wrote, “It is not always evident whether the federal government is committed to providing services on reserves of the same range and quality as those provided to other communities across Canada.”83 In fact, First Nations receive significantly fewer dollars per capita than non-Aboriginal groups when it comes to basic government services. The auditor general has also asserted that First Nations cannot effectively plan and control the delivery of their services because the federal government has not created a legislative base to hold itself accountable in dealing with Aboriginal peoples. He wrote,
Therefore, for First Nations members living on reserves, there is no legislation supporting programs in important areas such as education, health, and drinking water. Instead, the federal government has developed programs and services for First Nations on the basis of policy. As a result, the services delivered under these programs are not always well defined and there is confusion about federal responsibility for funding them adequately.84
The auditor general’s findings exemplify the need for the certainty of federal legislation to ensure the effectiveness of remedial and ongoing action on Aboriginal languages.
Some provinces and territories in Canada have made progress through legislation and other measures that focus on the official status of Aboriginal languages within their jurisdictions. First Nation and Inuit languages in the Northwest Territories85 and Nunavut86 have been designated as official languages. Nunavut has an Inuit Language Protection Act (2008) that includes a legal statement of the inherent right of the Inuit in Nunavut to use their language.87 Since 2002, Yukon legislation has recognized the importance of Yukon Aboriginal languages and expresses a wish to take appropriate measures to “preserve, develop and enhance” those languages.88
British Columbia has legislation providing for a First Peoples’ Language, Heritage and Culture Council, tasked with providing support and distributing funds to heritage and arts organizations.89 An accompanying regulation recognizes thirty-four distinct First Peoples’ languages.90 Several provinces have legislation that formally recognizes First Nation languages but with no concurring obligation to protect or promote such languages. For example, the 2010 Manitoba Aboriginal Languages Recognition Act recognizes that the languages of Cree, Dakota, Dene, Inuktitut, Michif, Ojibway, and Oji-Cree are “the Aboriginal languages spoken and used in Manitoba,” but it does not legislate official language status or obligate the province to take steps to protect and promote these languages.91
In Québec, Aboriginal children are exempted from French-language educational service requirements in order to permit them to receive instruction in their own languages.92 The preamble of the Charter of the French Language recognizes the rights of “Amerinds [sic] and the Inuit of Québec, the first inhabitants of this land, to preserve and develop their original language and culture.”93 The official languages of instruction for schools under the jurisdiction of the Cree (Cree School Board) and Inuit (Kativik School Board) are Cree and Inuktitut, respectively. In addition, “Indian reserves” are not subject to the requirements of the Charter of the French Language.94 None of the other provinces have any legislation officially addressing the status of Aboriginal languages.
The Commission concludes that the Government of Canada should establish a framework for a new commitment to respecting, preserving, and strengthening Aboriginal languages by enacting an Aboriginal Languages Act that is similar to the Native American Languages Act enacted by the US Congress. The Act should recognize that residential schools were part of a forced policy of linguistic assimilation, and affirm both Aboriginal and Treaty rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
14) We call upon the federal government to enact an Aboriginal Languages Act that incorporates the following principles:
i. Aboriginal languages are a fundamental and valued element of Canadian culture and society, and there is an urgency to preserve them.
ii. Aboriginal language rights are reinforced by the Treaties.
iii. The federal government has a responsibility to provide sufficient funds for Aboriginal-language revitalization and preservation.
iv. The preservation, revitalization, and strengthening of Aboriginal languages and cultures are best managed by Aboriginal people and communities.
v. Funding for Aboriginal language initiatives must reflect the diversity of Aboriginal languages.
15) We call upon the federal government to appoint, in consultation with Aboriginal groups, an Aboriginal Languages Commissioner. The commissioner should help promote Aboriginal languages and report on the adequacy of federal funding of Aboriginal-languages initiatives.
Canadian governments and the churches that ran residential schools have special obligations to assist in the retention of Aboriginal languages because of their past shared policies of forced assimilation. The United Church’s 1986 apology acknowledged the church’s responsibility for harm caused by forced assimilation: “We imposed our civilization as a condition for accepting the gospel. We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be.”95
The Presbyterian Church’s 1994 apology sought forgiveness for the church’s complicity in banning “some important spiritual practices through which Aboriginal peoples experienced the presence of the creator God” as well as for other practices that lead to “the loss of cultural identity and the loss of a secure sense of self” for former students.96
During a private meeting at the Vatican in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI expressed “sorrow” to a delegation from the Assembly of First Nations over the abuse and “deplorable” treatment that Aboriginal students suffered at residential schools run by the Roman Catholic Church, but he did not address the loss of language and culture.97 No formal and public apology has been made on behalf of the Catholic Church as an organization, although some individual Catholic organizations have made apologies, such as the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which apologized for its role in attempts to “assimilate aboriginal peoples” through residential schools.98 In one example of a particular diocese accepting responsibility, Bishop Murray Chatlain of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories acknowledged in 2009 that “We participated in a system that sought to strip away aboriginal language and culture.”99
It is important that the churches that ran the residential schools recognize that the purpose of the schools was assimilation and that language and cultural loss was one of the most damaging features of residential schools, and of similar policies of assimilation pursued in other schools. At the same time, apologies can only be a meaningful prelude to reconciliation if tangible steps are taken by the churches to help repair the damage they caused. This is particularly necessary given that residential school Survivors have not succeeded in obtaining compensation for lost language and culture through the courts.
Residential school Survivors have insisted that claims for loss of language and culture be a part of their many lawsuits against the Government of Canada and the churches. Both the government and the churches have aggressively opposed such claims. Even if the law recognized that Aboriginal language and culture loss was something that could be valued, the government and the churches argued that Survivors had waited too long to make their claims.
Claims about loss of language and culture were important for many Survivors. One former student at the Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, school alleged in a lawsuit that he was forcibly removed from his people, punished for speaking Cree, and prohibited from engaging in Aboriginal dancing, cultural, or religious activities. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal dismissed his claim on the basis that he had not sued public authorities within one year after leaving school, and that his allegations did not amount to a breach of fiduciary duty or trust.100
Frederick Lee Barney sued the United Church and the Government of Canada in one early case that went to the Supreme Court of Canada. He recovered damages for being sexually assaulted but not for loss of language and culture, despite his powerful testimony, in which he explained,
I was deprived of the love and guidance of my parents and siblings for five years. I lost my Native language and Aboriginal culture and was removed from my family roots. The enormity of the loss of both my culture and my connection with my family feels overwhelming and the effects irreversible. I lost my identity as a Native person. I live with a sense of not knowing who I am and how I should be in the world. I lost the friendship and support of my friends and community. I suffered a loss of self-esteem.... I’m angry about my loss of culture … It’s sickening. It was obvious the tremendous effect it has had on me as a person and yes, I get angry as hell.101
The trial judge in that case held that the federal government and the United Church did not engage in a breach of trust or a breach of fiduciary duty because they were candid and not dishonest about their plan to assimilate Aboriginal people.102 The Canadian legal system did not hear Survivors when they said in the lawsuits that the treatment of Aboriginal languages and cultures in the schools was wrong and the language and culture that was lost was valuable.
The Common Experience Payments (CEP) arising from the Settlement Agreement provided recognition of an individual’s loss of language and culture for those who could establish that they attended listed residential schools. Such payments, however, ignored the collective and intergenerational harms that have struck at the very core of Aboriginal identity. It is essential to understand, based on almost every statement the Commission received from almost seven thousand Survivors from every region of this country, that all of these losses are interconnected. These statements tell of devastating cumulative damage to Survivors, children, and grandchildren. This damage has also contributed to contemporary realities that add up to a significant financial, social, and reputational cost to Canada. It is not at all clear to this Commission why Aboriginal language and culture loss could not be recognized in Canadian courts.
The 2005 federal Task Force on Aboriginal Languages warned that the government’s past policies towards Aboriginal languages, most notably the policies used in residential schools, could be viewed as a violation of Aboriginal and Treaty rights as well as the fiduciary duties that government had with respect to the children taken, and to Aboriginal people generally. The Task Force concluded,
In our view, forcibly removing language and culture from individual First Nation, Inuit and Métis people is tantamount to a breach of Aboriginal and Treaty rights, as well as a breach of the Crown’s fiduciary duty, and should therefore be compensable. It is also our view that Canada’s refusal to compensate individuals who continue to suffer the devastating effects of their loss of connection to their communities and their languages, cultures and spiritual beliefs, fails to uphold the honour of the Crown. Further, this refusal has the effect of appearing to relegate First Nation, Inuit and Métis languages to the position of subjugated languages that can be forcibly removed from the memories of the people who spoke them, with impunity. Canada has taken the view that, while language is the collective right of a community or language group, compensation for loss of language will be a programmatic response to communities and language groups. We believe Canada’s position to be fundamentally wrong. Government funding of First Nation, Inuit and Métis languages must be made on the basis of their constitutional status and should not be viewed as arising as part of the compensation for legitimate claims for damages that arise from wrongs committed against many individuals.103
The Task Force found that the revitalization and preservation of First Nations languages must be done by First Nations themselves. Canada has a duty to provide the resources necessary to restore First Nation, Inuit, and Métis languages and cultures.
The essential value of Aboriginal cultures was again emphasized in a 2014 ruling in Ontario. In Brown v. Attorney General of Canada, a class action has been “certified” (and thus permitted to proceed) relating to the large-scale removal of Aboriginal children by child welfare authorities between 1965 and 1984. In refusing the federal government’s attempt to have the case thrown out, the Ontario Superior Court recognized that the case raises important issues about connection to culture and the harm of separation from one’s Aboriginal heritage:
Here we are not dealing with just one aspect of that culture. Here we are dealing with a person’s connection to that culture as a whole. It is difficult to see a specific interest that could be of more importance to aboriginal peoples than each person’s essential connection to their aboriginal heritage. In addition, on this point, the importance of aboriginal rights cannot be disputed.104
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes one of the most powerful and persuasive cases for governments to make reparations for forced assimilation. It recognizes Aboriginal languages as a vital part of Indigenous cultural rights. During the same time period that Canada supported and endorsed this important international declaration, it has backtracked on promises of increased funding for Aboriginal languages, and has treated Aboriginal languages as a minor part of a larger governmental portfolio devoted to all matters of Canadian heritage. Many provisions in the UN Declaration make clear that Canada has obligations to change course and to provide redress for its past policies.
Article 8 of the declaration recognizes that “Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.” Article 8(2) then provides that “states shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of and redress for any form of forced assimilation or integration.” As suggested throughout this volume, residential schools constituted a most pernicious form of “forced assimilation.” The linguistic policies pursued in the schools are among the worst forms of forced assimilation. Even if the modest payments of compensation to individuals in the form of the Common Experience Payment are seen as a form of individual reparation, Canada has not taken the kinds of steps that would be necessary to reverse the collective loss of language and culture that was the intended consequence of the residential schools. In the absence of such steps, redress has not occurred.
Article 13(1) of the UN Declaration recognizes that “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.” Article 14(1) similarly provides that “Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning,” and article 14(3) makes such rights real by providing that “States shall, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, take effective measures, in order for indigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access, when possible, to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.”
Article 16 provides that Indigenous peoples “have the right to establish their own media in their own languages and to have access to all forms of non-indigenous media without discrimination” and that states “shall take effective measures to ensure that State-owned media duly reflect indigenous cultural diversity.”
Article 19 is a critical provision in the declaration because it requires Canada to consult and cooperate in good faith with Indigenous peoples in order to obtain their consent prior to implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them. As a result, Canada cannot impose solutions upon Aboriginal peoples, but must work with Aboriginal peoples to implement its international obligations.105
Finally, it is difficult to reconcile the refusal of courts to acknowledge the loss of language and culture as being compensable with the very important principle that such acts could constitute acts of genocide an acknowledged crime against a racial group in breach of the UN Convention on Genocide.106
This Commission has found that the actions of the federal government in attacking and attempting to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages, not only in residential schools but in Aboriginal communities through ceremonial prohibitions in the Indian Act, amounted to cultural genocide. The term cultural genocide is not found in the UN Convention on Genocide, and an analysis of the evolution of the Convention prior to its adoption by the United Nations shows that inclusion of the term was rejected. Nonetheless, while the term genocide generally refers to the physical destruction of members of a racialized group, the Convention contains provisions that appear to contemplate criteria other than immediate physical destruction. For example, article 2 of the Convention states,
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Clearly, articles 2(d) and 2(e) do not require that the victims themselves be “destroyed” but that the measures taken against them be intended to result in the destruction of the “national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
The forcible sterilization of women and girls for the purpose of preventing their group from repopulating itself would be an act of genocide, even though the individual female victim would be allowed to live. The forcible removal of children from their racial community in order to be indoctrinated into another racial community and thereby “destroy” their original group would likewise be an act of genocide, even though the children themselves continued to live as members of the new group.
It is the Commission’s view that if Canada were to attempt to do today what it did in the nineteenth century through residential schools, it could face severe international consequences.
It seems logical to conclude that Canada’s actions in forcibly transferring Aboriginal children from their racial group to another in order to eliminate or destroy their cultures and languages—and therefore their racial group—could at least amount to a legal wrong cognizable in Canadian law because of Canada’s acceptance of it as a legal wrong in international law. No court has so held; nor as a Commission can we make a definitive finding on the point. The way does seem clear, however, for such legal recognition to be made at some point in the future.
The Commission concludes that the Aboriginal peoples of Canada have language rights tied to their rights under Canadian constitutional law, their rights under international law, and their legitimate claims to collective reparation for forced assimilation in the residential schools.
The Commission calls for a new approach from the Canadian government, an approach that must restore the right of Aboriginal communities to pursue the language and cultural initiatives that best reflect their own circumstances. This should be done, wherever possible, on a nation-to-nation basis, along the lines of the Yukon model where the government provides language funding to self-governing nations. A pan-Aboriginal approach is inappropriate given the diversity of Canada’s Aboriginal communities, their relative access to supportive resources, and the differences in the current health of the Aboriginal languages used in Canada.
The neglect of Aboriginal languages affects all Canadians. It impedes the ability of non-Aboriginal Canadians to understand and to appreciate the linguistic and cultural diversity that is part of a shared history. The language and culture of all Canadians is infused with the words and the history of Aboriginal peoples. Too easily people forget that proper names such as Québec and Saskatchewan and everyday words such as chipmunk (Odawa) and moose (Ojibway) are gifts from Aboriginal people and their ancestors.
However, there is much more for non-Aboriginal Canadians in a broader appreciation of the value of Aboriginal languages. For example, the Anishinaabe word sabawaa is used to describe a time in the Ontario spring when cold and warm air masses intermingle and cause fine mists to rise over the earth. The snows melt and the waters start to flow at this time. The Anishinaabe word for forgiveness is a related word: aabawewenimaa. It describes a process in which we loosen our thoughts towards others and let relationships flow more easily, becoming warmer towards each other.107 Other Aboriginal languages throughout Canada hold similar examples of wisdom and beauty.
Non-Aboriginal Canadians should also care about the damage done to Aboriginal languages and cultures because their government has apologized to Aboriginal peoples on their behalf. Canada’s 2008 apology for residential schools recognized explicitly that the schools were based on a “policy of assimilation” that “caused great harm, and has no place in our country.” It specifically recognized that the schools “had a lasting and damaging impact on Aboriginal culture, heritage and language.”108
There can be no real prospect for reconciliation if that apology is not seen as sincere and accompanied with a commitment to address the wrongs that prompted the apology in the first place. Those who have stolen something valuable cannot expect their apology to be believable and acceptable without the return of what was stolen, or a mutually agreeable level of compensation. In the case of residential schools, the apology is a moral commitment on the part of the Government of Canada to support the health of Aboriginal cultures and languages.
As a result of the residential school experience, many Aboriginal people lost their language and lost touch with their culture. Many also suffered a loss of a different sort. It was common for residential school officials to give students new names. At the Aklavik Anglican school in the Northwest Territories, a young Inuit girl named Masak was called Alice—she would not hear her old name until she returned home.109 At the Qu’Appelle school in Saskatchewan, Ochankuga’he (Path Maker) became Daniel Kennedy, named for the biblical Daniel, and Adélard Standing Buffalo was named for Adélard Langevin, the archbishop of St. Boniface.110 Survivors and their families who have sought to reclaim the names that were taken from them in residential schools have found the process to be both expensive and time consuming. The Commission believes that measures should be put in place to reduce the burden placed on those who seek to reclaim this significant portion of their heritage.
17) We call upon all levels of government to enable residential school Survivors and their families to reclaim names changed by the residential school system by waiving administrative costs for a period of five years for the name-change process and the revision of official identity documents, such as birth certificates, passports, driver’s licenses, health cards, status cards, and social insurance numbers.
Residential school Survivors do not need reports or studies to tell them that recovering their stolen cultures can assist them on their healing journey. They know this from their own experiences. Isabelle Knockwood, who attended the Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia, writes of recovering spirituality: “Many of us have returned to a traditional path as the source of our strength … Some of us have come to realize that we were abused not only physically but spiritually. For us, the Native Way with its Sacred Circle and respect for all living things is a means of healing that abuse.”111
The Commission heard many stories from Survivors about their early experiences with Aboriginal language and how learning language connected them to family and to place. Paul Stanley talked about this connection at the Commission’s community hearing in Deroche, British Columbia:
When you’re in bed with papa, and he tells you about your first story, and it’s about how the chipmunk got his stripes, and it was so funny to me, you know that I asked him every night to say it again, you know, and, and, and these things helped, too. And if I didn’t know a word, he’d let me know ... And so that’s how language is taught at home, in my place ... And it’s not by a desk or anything like that, which is okay, you know, other systems work anyway, but that’s how we started, so that was my life, you know, like to learn the language, and maybe a bit of culture.112
Esther Lachinette-Diabo, echoed that sentiment in Thunder Bay, Ontario:
I feel free to be able to speak in Ojibway, and I talk about the culture because I experienced it when I was a kid. I’ve seen my grandparents; I’ve seen my uncles; and I’ve seen medicine people come to our community, our trapline, and do their ceremonies. I can talk about those from first-hand experience.113
Matilda Lampe vividly remembers the day her younger sister first spoke to her father in Inuktitut at their home in Labrador:
At our supper table dad, Doris said to dad, “qanuivit?” [How are you?] Oh my God everybody just, like we all got quiet like this; just myself and Doris and my mom and dad. My dad put his food down; he got up and oh my God that was the best ever. My dad, my dad got up off his chair and went over to Doris; me and my mom were just looking at each other like, like myself like, thinking for the worst. She’s going to be hit; she’s going to be smacked something.
That was the best supper ever. My dad got up and went over to Doris and hugged her; first time ever and he actually took her, hugged her. He sat down and looked at Doris, nakummiik [thank you] … oh my God, that was the best ever … Doris picked up few, few words like, not hard words but easy. My dad got comfortable with her after; took him long time, almost a year.114
The Aboriginal cultures and languages that were damaged are actually even more precious today; for as battered and broken as they are, they hold the seeds for rejuvenation. The Survivors know that the recovery of language and culture was and remains critical for their own individual healing and for the health of Aboriginal families and communities in the future. Many of the Survivors explained to the Commission how they reconnected with Aboriginal languages and cultures as the most powerful and restorative part of their very difficult healing journeys.
Many remedies to the loss of language and culture have already been tested by different Aboriginal peoples across the country. These solutions, however, need support and nourishment from governments and churches, and support has not been forthcoming.
British Columbia has the greatest diversity of Aboriginal languages, having 27 of the 86 Aboriginal languages spoken in Canada, according to UNESCO. However, it accounts for only 7% of the country’s Aboriginal mother-tongue population because of the small speaker population.115 The 2011 census reported that BC is home to 30 different Aboriginal languages but that most of those languages have less than 1,000 people each.
For example, there are 925 recorded speakers of Gitksan, and 675 recorded speakers of Shuswap.116 British Columba has some of the smallest and most endangered Aboriginal mother-tongue populations, including the Salish family (3,700), the Tsimshian family (2,400), the Wakashan family (1,200), Kutenai isolate (155), Haida isolate (130), and Tlingit (90).117 In 2001, second-language learners accounted for over half the speakers of Tlingit, Haida, and smaller Salish languages.118
A 2010 study by the First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Cultures Council observed that the teaching of First Nations languages in schools in BC is “too limited to have any great effect” and has predicted that most fluent speakers of Aboriginal languages in BC may be gone by as early as 2016.119
The Sto:lo Nation is one of many British Columbia First Nations that is taking steps to revitalize and preserve its languages. The Sto:lo Nation spans the Fraser Valley and is comprised of eleven member First Nations: Aitchelitz, Le’qamel, Matsqui, Popkum, Skawahlook, Skowkale, Shxwha:y, Squiala, Sumas, Tzeachten, Yakweakwioose. The total population of these First Nations is about 2,094.
Halq’eméylem is the traditional language of the territory. With fewer than five fluent speakers of the language, it is considered very close to extinction. In the face of this risk of extinction, numerous steps are being taken to preserve the language in both the short and long term. For example, Seabird Island runs a Halq’emeylem Preschool Language Nest, which is a preschool modelled after a family home where young children are immersed in their language and culture. The children learn Halq’emeylem from fluent speakers and Elders while doing daily activities. The Language Nest takes a multigenerational approach, with parents encouraged to volunteer in the preschool and then continue to use the language at home.
The Sto:lo Nation Language Program has also developed an intensive immersion program. The program runs for fifty weeks and has a goal of developing highly fluent speakers of Halq’eméylem. An extensive language archive as well as language teaching materials are available on FirstVoices.com. The Sto:lo First Nation has been working together and at great odds to preserve their language. Nonetheless, the work is far from finished and much more must be done to ensure that Halq’emeylem is not lost.120
As late as 1949 only 111 Inuit were receiving full-time schooling in the North. Twelve were attending a federal day school in Kuujjuaq (Fort Chimo) in Northern Québec, 8 at the Anglican residential school at Fort George, Québec, and 91 at the two residential schools in Aklavik, Northwest Territories.121 Due to the uneven rate of development of the system, the Inuit and Inuvialuit in the Western Artic were pulled into the residential school system much earlier. Many of the communities where Inuktitut language survives are in the east (Nunavut) or above the Arctic Circle. It was not until the late 1950s, when a system of hostels and day schools was established across the North, that Inuit children began attending residential schools in significant numbers.122 By February 1959, 1,165 Inuit children were receiving full-time schooling in the North.123 Consequently, Inuit people were not spared the attacks on Aboriginal language and culture that characterized residential schools elsewhere. As early as 1968 social scientists were noting how Inuit children educated at residential school were forced to “play two different games”—one involving English and white ways at school, and the other in Inuktitut and involving Inuit ways at home.124 Willy Carpenter grew up in Tuktoyuktuk, Northwest Terrorities. He remembered,
We tried to speak our own language; we’d get scolding and punishment of some kind. I lost my language for a good two to three years. And I came back; I couldn’t hardly understand my mom, when she spoke to me in Inuvialuktun. But in time we got together speaking, I got it all back; and up to today I speak it. I could speak it really good. I got right back to it. I didn’t want to forget that ... Why did they treat us the way they did? Maybe they thought we were animals or something. I can’t understand that.125
Through the efforts of people like Willy Carpenter, Inuit languages have persisted. Inuktitut is one of the largest and most viable Aboriginal languages in Canada.126
Although Inuktitut remains strong, its use has declined.127 According to the 2011 census, just over 34,000 Inuit, or 63.7% of the total, reported Inuktitut as their mother tongue, down from 68% in 1996.128 Also of concern is the fact that the proportion is declining for Inuit who speak Inuktitut most often at home. In 2006, about 25,500 Inuit, 50% of the total, reported Inuktitut as the language most often spoken at home, down from 58% in 1996.129 The percentage of Inuit who reported that they spoke Inuktitut well enough to carry on a conversation is also declining, down to 63.3% from 69% in 2006 and 72% in 1996.130
Language fluency varies across Inuit Nunangat (consisting of the four regions of the Inuit homeland). Close to 100% of Inuit living in Nunavik (Northern Québec) can converse in an Inuit language. In Nunavut, nearly 90% can do so. However, fluency is much lower in Nunatsiavut (northern coastal Labrador) (24.9%) and in the Inuvialuit region of the Northwest Territories (20.1%). Outside Inuit Nunangat, only 10% of Inuit report speaking an Inuit language well enough to conduct a conversation.131
The large majority of Inuit adults in each region stated that it was very or somewhat important for them to keep, learn, or relearn Inuktitut. Nine in every ten Inuit parents stated it was very or somewhat important for their children to speak and understand Inuktitut.132 Inuit youth report a desire to increase access to learning, hearing, and using Inuktitut. Furthermore, these youth think governmental initiatives should facilitate, not replace, home and community-based efforts.133
Some of the health of Inuktitut can no doubt be attributed to the resources that have been devoted to its survival. Fifteen per cent of all language funding provided through Heritage Canada’s Aboriginal Language Initiative is devoted to Inuktitut.134 As well, programmers with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Northern Service radio and television have worked to expand their programming in Aboriginal languages in recent years. However, those advances are also threatened by repeated funding cuts.
Inuktitut is designated an official language in Nunavut.135 Also in Nunavut, efforts have been made to ensure that Inuktitut is integrated into political, economic, and social life. Nunavut formally recognizes by statute the inherent right of the Inuit in Nunavut to use their language. The Inuit Language Protection Act guarantees, among other things, the right to Inuit language instruction in Nunavut’s school system and the right to work in the Inuit language in territorial government institutions. It also specifies that governments, municipalities, community organizations, and businesses can use the Inuit language in reception and customer services, on signs, posters, and advertising, for essential, household, residential, and hospitality services, and in municipal services concerning public safety and welfare.136 Rights can be important in protecting fragile languages, but they must also be rooted in a healthy language that is used in daily life if they are not simply to be a symbolic reaffirmation of languages that may only appear to be healthy and protected.
Nunavut’s Education Act establishes a right to a bilingual education with the Inuit language, with the goal of producing graduates who are able to use both languages competently in academic and other contexts. The Act provides for several different models of bilingual instruction, with the ultimate decision about which model will be used to be made with community consultation, and to be subject to review every five years. The minister of education is responsible for ensuring that the education program supports the use, development, and revitalization of the Inuit language.137
However, underlying this institutional support for Inuktitut is the fact that intergenerational mother-tongue language transmission continues to be the foundation for language retention in the territory.138 In Nunavut, 83% reported an Inuktitut mother tongue.139 Thus, many Inuit children enter school already speaking their language, which makes it easier to implement language instruction in the primary grades.140
Other elements of the overall strategy that have supported the maintenance of Inuktitut include
• documentation of the language and the stories of the Elders;
• Inuktitut radio and television programming;
• widespread teaching of literacy skills and use of Inuktitut in the print media;
• the training and utilization of Inuit teachers;
• production of Inuktitut language materials;
• cultural-based activities for children on the land and in school; and
• a variety of community-based projects aimed at promoting and strengthening the use of the language in the home and community.
Additionally, the Nunavut Arctic College offers a certificate program for Inuktitut interpreters; and the Bathurst Mandate (Nunavut’s blueprint for Indigenous self-government) set a goal of having Inuktitut as the working language of the Nunavut government by 2020.141 Inuktitut also has the advantage of being a vital language in several jurisdictions. Therefore, the exchange of educational materials, and collaboration in the development of them, is an important option not available to other communities.
This multi-pronged approach recognizes that languages must be supported if they are to survive and thrive. Despite the fact that Inuktitut is an official language of the territory of Nunavut, the funding available to support the language is far inferior to the funding for French-language services in Nunavut. The federal government provides support to the small minority of francophones in Nunavut in the amount of approximately $4,000 per individual annually. In contrast, funding to support Inuit language initiatives is estimated at $44 per Inuk per year.142 Although Inuktitut is healthier than most Aboriginal languages, and language policy at the territorial level is robust, Canada could do much more to promote such languages, especially in a region that only the Inuit can claim is truly their homeland.
The Commission finds that the preservation and revitalization of Aboriginal languages is a necessary and constructive reparation for the attack on Aboriginal languages and cultures in the residential schools and in Canadian society. It also concludes that retention of Aboriginal languages could provide Canada with vital social capital to enrich our understandings of the environment, health, culture, justice, and governance.
The Commission finds that there is a willingness and ability among Aboriginal people to undertake the rewarding work of learning Aboriginal languages. The Commission recognizes that there are enormous differences in the current use of Aboriginal languages among Inuit, First Nations, and Métis, and geographically within those groups. It is clear to the Commission that a one-size-fits-all approach to language will not work.
There is a need for Canada’s Aboriginal peoples to pursue their own language policies in a way that is appropriate for their own distinct situations. RCAP outlined a very practical approach to preserving and strengthening Aboriginal language, proposing an eight-stage process for language revitalization, with use of languages in government as only the seventh and eighth phases. It emphasized the importance of the communities themselves reconstructing language, mobilizing older fluent speakers, restoring intergenerational transmission through families and community.
The stories, the songs, the languages that we learn from our families as children influence how we go on to live in the world. This nurturing role in the transmission of beliefs was taken from Aboriginal parents when their children were forced into residential schools. That role must be restored and honoured. The Commission has been convinced by the testimonials from Survivors, as well as by the social science evidence, that the best way to restore Aboriginal languages and cultures is by ensuring that families and communities are the focal point for learning.
There are many possible models and no one size will fit all. As RCAP recognized, the best way to revitalize and preserve culture, including language, is to ensure that it is part of everyday life and passed on to children from a young age. As a teacher with the Secwepemc First Nation observed,
Our children need the opportunity to hear our languages so that they can go to sleep with our language, they could hear their grandfather speaking the language, they could hear their grandmother speaking the language, they could hear and dream in the language. And I think, too, I have a belief that when we are in our sweats [sacred ceremonial lodges], if we’re going to meet our ancestors wouldn’t it be beautiful to be conversing in the language as the Creator has gifted us? … Our children will be going to those levels, too, because they’ll be going and meeting our ancestors and be able to understand and make sure our messages and our teachings are not lost.143
However, very few Aboriginal families and communities are in a position to be able to employ effective measures for language preservation. This is especially the case as fluent speakers become elderly and are not being replaced by younger generations. Loss of language will also challenge the ability of communities to impart cultural knowledge.
Yet many Aboriginal people are rising to the challenge. In the face of great odds, we are witnessing an upsurge in innovative community-based and community-controlled initiatives to revitalize and preserve culture and language. These initiatives include local development of language classes in schools; language preservation through writing and audio and video recordings; Aboriginal media on radio, TV, and the Internet; as well as cultural classes and immersion programs. These initiatives must be permitted to flourish and grow, with the choice about how to go about this important work ultimately belonging to the communities themselves. The TRC has been able to encourage and witness some of these efforts through our role in recommending funding for proposed commemoration projects.
‘Language nests’ provide one interesting model that has been used with success internationally. The nests have been adopted by a number of Aboriginal communities here in Canada. They can ensure that language and culture are part of the everyday life of children from a young age, even if their parents are not fluent speakers. There are different models but, generally, preschool children as young as six weeks of age spend their days immersed in their Aboriginal language and culture in a home-like environment. Ideally, children then transition to an immersion school available in the community.
There are a number of language nests in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.144 Some began simply because one or two individuals in the community took the initiative and made it happen. As one administrator from a BC language nest observed,
People can walk in and say, “Wow, this is easy”… because all we’re doing is inviting children over to grandma’s house and speaking the language all day and playing with them. There’s no mystery to that…. We go down to the lake and we play with logs and we put rocks on logs and we make those into canoes, we go out into the fields and we play with the flowers and we make flower wreaths and stuff … We don’t need to overcomplicate it. I think that’s what people tend to do. They overcomplicate the whole thing. We forget that children need love and nurturing, they need positive reinforcement, they need acceptance, they need to be safe, they need healthy food, there’s real basics that we need to do, we don’t need to worry about too many other things. In a nutshell, that’s what I think a language nest is.145
The language nests do more than simply teach language. They also ensure that children learn about their cultures, beliefs, practices, and songs. Traditional drumming and dancing are often incorporated, and one community introduced the practice of using traditional names for the children. Interviews conducted as part of a study of language nests in BC suggest that children who participated “better appreciated their history, identity, and traditions.”146
In addition to inspiring children, language nests can also assist parents. They can learn the language from their children as they come home and talk about what they have learned. The children then become teachers themselves and valuable resources for the community. The community itself may find that connections are made, especially with Elders and others who must be fluent in the language in order to run language nests; these connections also provide social and linguistic capital that will assist the community. In one community, the first children who went through the language nest and then K–7 immersion have now graduated from high school and work at the immersion school as curriculum developers. One of the teachers reported that she has conferred with these past graduates (who are now young adults) on certain words or concepts that she does not know. She respectfully referred to them as her “little Elders.”147
Unfortunately, the barriers and obstacles to developing such programs can seem enormous. An evaluation in the Northwest Territories identified many hurdles: a lack of administrative capacity, staffing challenges, a lack of fluent speakers, low or no wages, lack of core funding, lack of space, licensing requirements, and the lack of curriculum and materials.148 Again, these challenges underline the importance of giving Aboriginal communities the powers and the funding they need.
Although Aboriginal languages are best preserved when they are learned in the home as a first language,149 both the state of Aboriginal languages in Canada and the desire of many to reconnect with their cultures suggest that more support should be given to learning Aboriginal languages as a second language.
To begin with, many mother-tongue populations are aging beyond childbearing years; and second, for most children the ideal family and community conditions for mother-tongue transmission are becoming the exception rather than the norm. Demographic data show that the children most likely to learn an Aboriginal language as a second language are from linguistically mixed families and live in urban areas.150 Approximately 22% of Aboriginal people who reported to the 2011 National Household Survey that they could conduct a conversation in an Aboriginal language had learned it as a second language. That proportion varied from 35.3% for Métis to 23.1% for First Nations people to 10.2% for Inuit.151
There is also a demand among Aboriginal people for such language training. According to the 2001 Aboriginal Peoples Survey, parents of 60% of Aboriginal children in non-reserve areas believed it was very important or somewhat important for their children to speak and understand an Aboriginal language.
The survey report also notes that in Saskatchewan, 65% of Aboriginal adults and 63% of Aboriginal youth aged fifteen to twenty-four living off-reserve considered it important to know their language; in Yukon, 78% of adults and 76% of youth considered it important.152
The Commission urges all parties to the Settlement Agreement to support community-based approaches to language retention as recommended by RCAP. This may require innovative approaches to the use of Elders and others as teachers and the use of language nests and immersion programs. Schools should be flexible and responsive in their attempts to encourage the teaching of Aboriginal languages.
As a way of preserving Aboriginal languages and building broader support for national reconciliation, language instruction should be extended through post-secondary institutions. This would allow Aboriginal-language speakers to develop greater proficiency while at the same time institutionalizing language instruction in an academic context.
16) We call upon post-secondary institutions to create university and college degree and diploma programs in Aboriginal languages.
The fragile state of almost all Aboriginal languages in Canada is a damaging legacy of residential schools. Although the schools contributed greatly to the decline, so too did the federal day schools and public schools, which made no room for Aboriginal languages or cultural expression. The repressive policies used against Aboriginal languages and cultures in all schools, and in Canadian society generally, were based on the view that Aboriginal languages and cultures were primitive, savage, and inferior.
It is especially regrettable that the Canadian government did not follow through in 2006 on earlier funding commitments with respect to Aboriginal languages. Those actions are a significant barrier to reconciliation. Canada’s policies on Aboriginal languages are neither fiscally nor structurally sound. Funding for Aboriginal language initiatives has not increased since 1998. Canada has pursued a paternalistic policy of heritage subsidies. These are a direct rejection of RCAP’S recommendation that policies designed to preserve language respect the inherent rights of Aboriginal people.
The churches, which ran so many of the schools, simply asserted that Christianity was superior to the spirituality, values, and ceremonies of Aboriginal systems. The federal government and the churches need to make collective reparation for the damage they have done to Aboriginal languages and cultures. In particular, the Government of Canada should, as recommended by RCAP, approach the funding of Aboriginal languages on a nation-to-nation basis that recognizes that language policy is a core element of Aboriginal self-determination. Such an approach should also recognize the great diversity of Aboriginal peoples within Canada, and the different needs of different communities.
The Commission would also like to emphasize that these obligations are affirmed in the Canadian Constitution and in numerous legal precedents. Canada is also a signatory to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a document that clearly sets out obligations that the Government of Canada has to make reparations for past policies, and to address the current policy and funding failures and inadequacies.
While the Commission heard many painful stories about the direct and intergenerational harm caused by the loss of language and culture, the Commissioners were heartened by the many stories we heard of resistance, resilience, and recovery. We are convinced that reconnection with Aboriginal languages and cultures will have important healing effects. Such initiatives will also increase the social and intellectual capital of Canada by preserving Aboriginal languages.
As the 2005 Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures noted, the ultimate responsibility lies with Aboriginal people:
Canada cannot speak our languages for us. Canada cannot restore them. And Canada cannot promote them among our peoples. We must take our rightful positions as the first and most appropriate teachers of our languages and cultures. We must begin by speaking our own languages to our children in our homes and communities and we must do it daily. We cannot delegate this task to our schools or leave it for the next generation.153
At the same time, non-Aboriginal people, as represented by the Government of Canada and the churches, have moral and legal responsibilities to help repair the linguistic and cultural damages caused by their failed attempts at forced assimilation in the schools.
The recommendations of this Commission are intended to provide a guide as to how these obligations can be discharged. We hope they honourably reflect and reaffirm what Survivors have told us about the vital importance of maintaining Aboriginal languages and cultures. As Survivor Sabrina Williams so eloquently puts it,
All things that are attached to language: it’s family connections; it’s oral history; it’s traditions; it’s ways of being; it’s ways of knowing; it’s medicine; it’s song; it’s dance; it’s memory; it’s everything, including the land. Because when I listen to people speak our language I can hear where, start to hear where it might have come from. So, to me … that’s another act of reconciliation—is to be able to provide that support so we can reclaim our languages.154