Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:43:13.716Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Promises, Acts, and Action

Indigenous Language Politics in Canada

from Part III - The Canadian Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2019

Thomas Ricento
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
Get access

Summary

This chapter addresses the current political climate in Canada with respect to language politics through an examination of historical settler-colonial and Indigenous relations. The focus is the interplay, and the inherent contradictions, between the state and Indigenous language interests. This includes a consideration of language and education rights, policies, and moves to reconciliation on behalf of state and Indigenous actors. The diverse goals and outcomes of Indigenous educational policies and practices will be examined with a focus on the Canadian Arctic, the role of Indigenous land-based pedagogies, and the necessary conceptualization and reaffirmation of languages as unbounded, action-oriented practices that resist objectification and enumeration.

Type
Chapter
Information
Language Politics and Policies
Perspectives from Canada and the United States
, pp. 244 - 262
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Annahatak, B. (2014). Silatuniq: Respectful state of being in the world. Etude/Inuit/Studies, 38(1–2), 2331.Google Scholar
Asch, M. (2014). On Being Here to Stay: Treaties and Aboriginal Rights in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Berger, P., Allen, S., Aylward, L., Crago, M., Dorais, L.-J., Genesee, F., Laugrand, F., Martin, I., McAuley, A., Møller, H., Pesco, D., Rodon, T., Spada, N., Tompkins, J., Tulloch, S., & Walton, F. (2017). Open letter – If Nunavut revokes Inuit language and education rights, Canada fails the test of nation-building. Retrieved from http://bill37.tunngavik.com/submissions-to-the-gn/open-letter-if-nunavut-revokes-inuit-language-and-education-rights-canada-fails-the-test-of-nation-building/ [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Berger, T. (2006). Conciliator’s Final Report, 1 March 2006 “The Nunavut Project,” 2006, Retrieved from www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100030982/1542915160660 [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Bill 37: An Act to Amend the Education Act and the Inuit Language Protection Act. (2017). Legislative Assembly of Nunavut. Retrieved from https://assembly.nu.ca/submissions-standing-committee-legislation-bill-37-act-amend-education-act-and-inuit-language-protec [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Budach, G., Patrick, D. & Mackay, T. (2015). “Talk around objects”: Designing trajectories of belonging in an urban Inuit community. Social Semiotics, 25(4), 446–64.Google Scholar
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (2015, July 11). Aboriginal languages in Canada can and should be made official, expert says. Retrieved from www.cbc.ca/news/ canada/british-columbia/aboriginal-languages-in-canada-can-and-should-be-made-official-expert-says-1.3147759 [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (2017, May 5). Nunavut MLAs reverse course on controversial language/education act. Retrieved from www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/education-bill-37-inuit-language-1.4101413 [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Cloutier, S. (2013). Uqausivit: Our language implementing made-in-Nunavut language legislation. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Foundation of Endangered Languages Conference, October 2–4, 2013, Carleton University, Ottawa, pp. 12–15.Google Scholar
Coulthard, G. S. (2016). Response. Historical Materialism, 24(3), 92103.Google Scholar
Everett-Green, R. (2016, December 28). Trudeau promises aboriginal language bill, but activists say whole system needs overhaul. Globe and Mail. Retrieved from www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/trudeau-promises-aboriginal-language-bill-but-the-whole-system-needs-an-overhaul/article33444970/ [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Government of Canada (2019). Bill C-91, House of Commons. Retrieved from www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-91/first-reading [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Haque, E. & Patrick, D. (2015). Indigenous languages and the racial hierarchisation of language policy in Canada. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36(1), 2741.Google Scholar
Haugen, E. (1966). Dialect, language, nation. American Anthropologist, 68(6), 922–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawthorne, H. B. (ed.) ([1966] 1967). A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada: Economic, Political, Educational Needs and Policies. Ottawa: Indian Affairs Branch.Google Scholar
Hobart, C. W. & Brant, C. S. (1966). Eskimo education, Danish and Canadian: A comparison. Canadian Review of Anthropology and Sociology, 3(2), 4766.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) (2014). Social determinants of Inuit health in Canada. Retrieved from www.itk.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ITK_Social_ Determinants_ Report.pdf [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Jessen Williamson, K. (2006). Inuit post-colonial gender relations in Greenland. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen.Google Scholar
Kuptana, R. (2014). Indigenous peoples in Canada: Politics, policy and human rights-based approaches to development and relationship-building. Paper delivered at Trent University, Peterborough. Retrieved from www.facebook.com/notes/ 10152653528630909/ [Last accessed January 6, 2018].Google Scholar
Milloy, J. (2008) Indian Act colonialism: A century of dishonor, 1869–1969. Research paper for the National Centre for First Nations Governance. NCFNG. May 2008. Retrieved from: http://fngovernance.org/ncfng_research/milloy.pdf [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Muehlmann, S. (2012a). Von Humboldt’s parrot and the countdown of last speakers in the Colorado Delta. Language & Communication, 32(2), 160–68.Google Scholar
Muehlmann, S. (2012b). Rhizomes and other uncountables: The malaise of enumeration in Mexico’s Colorado River Delta. American Ethnologist, 39(2), 339–53.Google Scholar
Mühlhäusler, P. (1996). Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Region. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (2007). Saqqiquq: Kindergarten to grade 12 education in Nunavut. Annual report on the state of Inuit culture and society. Retrieved from www.tunngavik.com/publications/ [Last accessed January 6, 2018].Google Scholar
Palmater, P. (2017). Evidence of good faith lacking in Trudeau’s Indigenous agenda. Canadian Dimension, 51(1), 6.Google Scholar
Patrick, D. (2007). Indigenous language endangerment and the unfinished business of nation-states. In Heller, M. & Duchêne, A. (eds.), Discourses of Endangerment: Interest and Ideology in the Defence of Languages. London: Continuum, pp. 3556.Google Scholar
Patrick, D. (2016). Indigenizing language policy in Canada: Redressing racial hierarchies. In Lane-Mercier, G., Merkle, D. & Koustas, J. (eds.), Plurilinguisme et pluriculturalisme. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, pp. 125–38.Google Scholar
Patrick, D. & Budach, G. (2014). Urban-rural dynamics and Indigenous urbanization: The case of Inuit language use in Ottawa. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 13(4), 236–53.Google Scholar
Patrick, D., Murasugi, K. & Palluq-Cloutier, J. (2017). Standardization of Inuit Languages in Canada. In Lane, P., Costa, J. & De Korne, H. (eds.), Standardizing Minority Languages: Competing Ideologies of Authority and Authenticity in the Global Periphery. New York: Routledge, pp. 135–53.Google Scholar
Patrick, D. & Shearwood, P. (1999). The roots of Inuktitut-language bilingual education. Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 19(2), 249–62.Google Scholar
Palluq-Cloutier, J. (2013). Standardization of the Inuit language in Canada. In Norris, M. J., Anonby, E., Junker, M.-O., Ostler, N. & Patrick, D. (eds.), FEL XVII: Endangered Languages Beyond Boundaries: Community Connections, Collaborative Approaches and Cross-Disciplinary Research. Bath, England: Foundation for Endangered Languages, pp. 8890.Google Scholar
Palluq-Cloutier, J. (2014). The standardization of Inuktut in the education system in Nunavut. Unpublished Master’s thesis. University of Prince Edward Island.Google Scholar
Patrick, D., Budach, G., & Muckpaloo, I. (2013). Multiliteracies and family language policy in an urban Inuit community. Language Policy, 12(1), 4762.Google Scholar
Pucci, M. (2017, June 19). “A core part of our identity”: Indigenous language law targeted for 2018. CBC. Retrieved from www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/indigenous-language-inuktut-natan-obed-1.4168017 [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Rowan, M.C. (2014). Co-constructing early childhood programs nourished by Inuit worldviews. Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 38(1–2), 7394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schreyer, C., Corbett, J., Gordon, N., & Larson, C. (2014). Learning to talk to the land online stewardship in Taku Rier Tlingit territory. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 106–33.Google Scholar
Simon, M. (2014). Canadian Inuit: Where we have been and where we are going. In Battarbee, K. & Fossum, J. E. (eds.), The Arctic Contested. Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 177–89.Google Scholar
Simpson, L. (2011). Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing.Google Scholar
Simpson, L. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 125.Google Scholar
Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures (2005). Towards a New Beginning: A Foundational Report for a Strategy to Revitalize First Nation, Inuit and Métis Languages and Cultures. Report to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, June. Ottawa: Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures.Google Scholar
Tomiak, J. (2016). Unsettling Ottawa: Settler colonialism, Indigenous resistance and the politics of scale. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 25(1), 821.Google Scholar
Tomiak, J. (2017). Indigenous lives and rights still ignored. Trudeau: style over substance. Canadian Dimension, 51(1), 4042.Google Scholar
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Honouring the truth, reconciling for the future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Retrieved from http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.800288/publication.html [Last accessed March 20, 2019].Google Scholar
Tulloch, S., Kusugak, A., Chenie, C., Pilakapsi, Q., Uluqsi, G. & Walton, F. (2017). Transformational bilingual learning: Re-engaging marginalized learners through language, culture, community, and identity. Canadian Modern Language Review, 73(4), 438–62.Google Scholar
Tulloch, S., Pilakapsi, Q., Uluqsi, G., Kusugak, A., Chenier, C., & Crockatt, K. (2013). The Miqqut Project: Joining Literacy, Culture and Well-Being through Non-Formal Learning in Nunavut. Research Report. Cambridge Bay, NU: Ilitaqsiniq - Nunavut Literacy Council.Google Scholar
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (1953). The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education. Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Watt-Cloutier, S. (2015). The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet. Toronto: Penguin.Google Scholar
Wimmer, A. & Schiller, N. G. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–34.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×