This text is part of the special section Indigenous Development
Despite the challenges, some local and regional initiatives ensure their dissemination, learning and protection.
“Quebec has 69 indigenous schools and indigenous friendship centers, present in at least 14 cities, which also act for the transmission of knowledge and in particular languages,” says anthropologist Carole Lévesque, full professor at INRS and responsible for DIALOG, a research and knowledge network relating to indigenous peoples created in 2001.
In 2018, the DIALOG network created the Kapakan Alliance, which is particularly interested in educational issues, particularly languages. Thanks to the support of the Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation, this organization has held around fifteen workshops and, more recently, a second forum which brought together around fifty participants. “We talk a lot about language as a question of rights, but education initiatives are absolutely unknown,” notes the professor.
Frances Mowatt has been participating in Kapakan Alliance activities for two years. A teacher at the Migwan school in the community of Pikogan, near Amos, in Abitibi, she discovered Kapakan through her sister Julie, who sits on the Alliance’s strategic and scientific orientation committee. “I benefited a lot from the exchanges, in particular to find things, and to pass on ours,” she says.
Reverse
According to Carole Lévesque, it is very difficult to make generalizations about the state of the 11 indigenous languages in Quebec. The cry, the Inuktitut, Naskapi and Atikamek benefit from a very high transmission rate. Conversely, the Huron, Maliseet, Mohawk and Wabanaki are very threatened or almost extinct. Between the two, there are the Anishinabe, the Innu and the Micmac, whose health varies according to communities and generations.
Frances Mowatt gives some figures on the situation in Pikogan, which has around 650 residents. “Among those aged 55 and over, almost all [parlent l’anichinabé]. But among 35-55 year olds, it drops to half, then a quarter among 18-35 year olds, and 10% among the youngest. Fortunately, children still understand this a lot, we are banking on that. But parents’ lack of vocabulary is a challenge. »
She is part of a committee of elders and former teachers which formed a sort of terminology commission: they meet once a month in order to modernize the Anishinaabe language. “Our language is very colorful, but we are missing lots of words. At each meeting, we explore a theme: wild animals, farm animals, food, etc. », says Frances Mowatt, who is working to put together a small visual dictionary of 2000 words.
The type of initiatives vary greatly depending on the community and language, explains Carole Lévesque. Among the Innu of Pessamit, on the North Shore, where the language is widely spoken, the community mobilizes in March, during Indigenous Languages Month, to organize a dense program of competitions, dictations and activities around of the language. On the Uashat-Maliotenam side, in Sept-Îles, we organize stays in the area to introduce young people to portage trails and rivers and to help them practice vocabulary. On the Attikamek side, the La Tuque Native Friendship Center is exploring the possibility of making more room for the language in the schools of the school service center.
Promote academic perseverance
Frances Mowatt explains that her community relies heavily on language and culture to ensure academic perseverance — and vice versa. Since Pikogan took charge of education in 1980, Migwan primary school welcomes 92 to 110 children depending on the year. The program is primarily in French, but children receive two and a half hours of Anishinaabe each week. “But we have to do everything. Exercise books, books, you can’t order anything. »
Language evolves because communities evolve, particularly towards the city. “For 25 years, the trend has been continuous. Half of the 1,200 municipalities have an indigenous presence with appreciable proportions in several cities, including Quebec and Val-d’Or,” says Carole Lévesque. In the Montreal metropolitan area, the figure would be around 34,000, reports the Native Community Network in Montreal. For La Tuque, we would be at 23% of the population according to Statistics Canada. Co-signer in 2015 of an important synthesis of knowledge on the academic success and perseverance of indigenous students, she adds: “When we reach such proportions, it takes policies. We can no longer rely on individual arrangements.”
She salutes the teachers who make commendable efforts in this direction, but she deplores the fact that they are rarely supported by their colleagues, school management or that of the School Service Center. “It takes an internal policy for welcoming indigenous students, it takes an educational approach, materials, actions from the hierarchy. Knowledge of indigenous language and culture is not enough. »
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