Language: Keeping the language alive
By Christopher Mason
It was a 10-day course, and it only scratched the surface. But when 40 residents of the
Haida Gwaii community of Skidegate completed a short Haida language course one summer day
in 1998, it was cause for a parade through the town's main streets, led by a fire truck
no less, complete with wailing sirens and flashing lights. The residents were celebrating
the first steps toward the re-birth of their language — a language many had given up
for dead following years of residential schools, cultural suppression and waning interest
among the community's youth.
"We'd never been so happy," says Pearle Pearson, 80, a fluent Haida
speaker. "We danced through the village and then that night we had a community feast
and all the students stood up and spoke in Haida."
| 'It's a scary thing because we only have about 30 people who can speak fairly good Haida...' |
|
That summer, John Medicine Horse Kelly, the local school board's First
Nations language coordinator, teamed with Wendy Campbell, a curriculum
developer, to launch a language renewal effort that included posters
telling people they could learn Haida in 10 days. The approach was controversial,
but the class jump-started a rush to save the language while its few
elderly speakers are alive.
"It's a scary thing because we only have about 30 people who can speak fairly
good Haida and we figure it takes at least 100 to keep a language going," says John
Williams, 85.
Though the initial 10-day course didn't increase the number of fluent Haida speakers,
it evolved into a program for elders, including Williams, who spend up to 25 hours each week
building a glossary that currently holds some 13,000 Haida words. The program, called the
Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (SHIP), aims to preserve the language and distinguish its
various dialects. Its work has been complied into 68 lesson plans that are available to Haida
Gwaii schools.
"We document words as the elders remember them," says Diane Brown, who runs
the SHIP program and at 59 is the youngest of the fluent Haida speakers. "Like today,
we got a word that we haven't had. Today we got a new word for 'shy.'"
Recently, a group of schoolchildren have begun taking language courses through SHIP. The
elders are watching their progress closely.
| '...it makes you think there is hope' |
|
"It feels wonderful because it makes you think there is hope," says Brown. "The
young ones are just beginning, but they are getting better and their pronunciation is getting
better."
Many of the elders learned Haida in their youth and have troubling stories of friends and
relatives who emerged from childhood unable to speak their native tongue.
"My late husband was sent to a residential school when he was seven years old," says
Pearson. "Of course, the language was not allowed to be spoken, so he could not understand
Haida by the time he came back at 16."
Pearson learned Haida from her grandmother. Brown learned it from her mother — and
learned to speak it fluently though all her friends spoke English. Williams picked up the
language by speaking with the elders who frequented his father's store.
"Everyone in Skidegate speaking their language — that is what we hope for," says
Pearson. "They say language is the backbone of a community and I think if we can do this
it will make everyone very proud." |
