Building a Community Language Development Team with Québec (original) (raw)

The Niichii Project: Revitalizing Indigenous Language in Northern Canada

TESOL in Context

Two Anishnabek kindergarten teachers discuss four principles of Indigenous pedagogies in a project with a university researcher that created a context for children to engage in activities to learn their Anishnabek language and culture, and create positive identities. The university researcher sent a rabbit puppet named Niichii (Friend), who was assigned the role of an Anishnaabek child whose family was from their Indigenous community but had moved away. Taking the role of Niichii’s Kokum (Grandmother), the university researcher asked the child to teach Niichii the community’s language and traditional ways. The teachers describe and interpret the learning activities of the Niichii project in terms of four elements of Indigenous pedagogies: intergenerational learning; experiential learning; spiritual learning involving interconnections with the land; and learning about relationality. Implications for other bilingual and multilingual contexts include creating role play contexts where c...

Language use in Nunavut: a view from the World

2016

This project is an initial examination of language use in Nunavut with respect to the World Englishes theoretical framework. It explores the characteristics of the Three Concentric Circles as defined by Kachru (1990) to explain English language spread and use, and aims to place indigenous languages in the Inner Circle in this characterization. In particular language use in Canada’s newest northern territory, Nunavut, is profiled and the following issues examined: do the Inuit in Nunavut share more with speech communities in the Outer Circle than with the current characterization of language use in the Inner Circle?. Consequently, does the World Englishes framework need to be re-examined to take into account the realities of language use and users in indigenous communities of the Inner Circle? Furthermore, are there current approaches to minority/regional languages in Outer Circle countries (Africa is used as a case study here) that can inform discussion around language maintenance a...

Daghida: Cold Lake First Nation Works Towards

2014

about the risk of losing their language. In this paper, we will outline the context of language loss on the Cold Lake First Nations (CLFN) reserve as well as describe the collaborative research project between the academic community and that of Cold Lake First Nations and the efforts supported by this project to revitalize the Dene Suline language. The Cold Lake First Nations Dene Suline 1 live near Cold Lake, Alberta, approximately 300 kilometres northeast of Edmonton on the Alberta and Saskatchewan border. They originally lived in family groups on lands encompassing roughly 150,000 square kilometres, although the reserve lands that they now inhabit represent less than one percent of their traditional territory. They were a nomadic people who maintained both summer and winter camps, travelling between them by foot or dog team. After the signing of Treaty Six in 1876, many families worked on their reserve farms in summer raising cattle and horses. In winter, they continued to travel...

The Arctic Indigenous Language Initiative: Assessment, Promotion, and Collaboration

2013

An indigenous-driven project, the Arctic Indigenous Language Initiative (AILI), is working to reverse language shift through activeengagement and collaboration throughout the circumpolar region. The circumpolar Arctic is undergoing radical climate change and equally radical cultural disruption. Language shift is an integral part of cultural disruption in this region: of the 50 or so indigenous languages spoken in the circumpolar Arctic, current assessments indicate that all but Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic; iso-639 kal) are endangered. Arctic indigenous peoples are perhaps uniquely organized within the world today in a way that potentially empowers them to take action. Their position as permanent participants on the Arctic Council gives them a political voice to leverage change. The trans-national status presents opportunities for collaboration and challenges due to the large geographic distances and the implications of working with and across differing demographics, disparate cult...

The inuit language in inuit communities in Canada [Book Review]

2009

It is rare that a linguist is asked to review a map. It is rarer still that one gets to read a map that not only provides the borders of a language family but is truly about the language and its speakers. The Inuit Language in Inuit Communities in Canada is a map of the Inuit language family territory, about the languages, in the languages.

Shifting Sands: Language and Identity in North American Indigenous Communities

2008

In this brief essay it is my intent to address some of the key issues involving language and identity in North American indigenous communities. For this purpose I will employ the term ‘North American indigenous communities’ to refer to groups generally known in the United States of America as ‘Native Americans’ (excluding, however, Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders) and in Canada as ‘First Nations’. Although ways will be discussed in which indigenous attitudes towards language and identity have been changing in the entire region over the last hundred years, the primary examples will be taken from the Algonquian area, involving communities from Northeast Canada (Cree) to Northern Mexico (Kickapoo). For many illustrative examples of these trends I will draw on my fieldwork (Whittaker 1996) among the Sauk communities of Central Oklahoma and the NebraskaKansas border area, two groups officially known as the Sac & Fox Nation of Oklahoma and the Missouri.