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Canada Settles Cultural and Linguistic ‘Genocide’ Suit

Canada has agreed to pay out C$2.8bn ($2.09bn) to settle a decade-long lawsuit seeking reparations for the loss of language and indigenous culture caused by the residential school system.

The class-action lawsuit first presented by 325 First Nations in 2012, expressed that mandatory residential schools tirelessly eroded indigenous culture and imposed bans on native languages.

Over 150,000 Indigenous students educated at approximately 130 residential schools across Canada from the 19th century until the 1990s, were forbidden—often violently, from speaking their ancestral tongues and practicing any kind of traditions.

During court proceedings, survivors painfully testified about deaths of their classmates at the schools, abuse suffered and poorly built, unsanitary facilities. In many cases, children were removed from their families by force and sent to the schools, often run by churches.

In 2021, radar technology produced horrifying evidence of unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 students on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Thousands of students are believed to have died at the schools from neglectful conditions leading to disease, malnutrition, accidents, fires and violence.

At a recent event, Shane Gottfriedson, the former chief of the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation and British Columbia regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations, said that it had “always been a fight with government” to fairly settle Native Canadian human rights and claims to Indigenous land. Also speaking at the event, Marc Miller, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, said the recent settlement would not “erase or make up for the past” but “what it can do is address the collective harm caused by Canada’s past”.

A 2015 report by The landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded Canada’s residential school system amounted to “cultural genocide.”

Rosanne Casimir, current Kúkpi7, or Chief, of theTk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation said in a statement, “Canada spent over 100 years trying to destroy our languages and cultures through residential schools. It is going to take incredible efforts by our nations to restore our languages and culture—this settlement gives nations the resources and tools needed to make a good start.”

Under the new settlement, the Canadian government will place the compensation amount into a not-for-profit trust for Indigenous communities to fund education, culture, and language programs. In a statement the government said the funds will also be used to design projects dedicated to “healing, wellness, education, heritage, language, and commemoration activities” for former students, to help them in “reconnecting with their heritage,”. 

The full agreement is expected to be released after a hearing in late February. 

Campaign Seeks to Silence Indigenous Voice in Australian Parliament

An Australian group has launched a campaign against a scheduled referendum to allow Indigenous Australians a voice in parliament, claiming it would not fully resolve issues that affect them.

The landmark referendum due to be held later this year, will initiate an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice by means of committee—allowing Indigenous peoples to represent themselves to parliament on matters that affect them.

For the first time in history, the referendum would add language to Australia’s constitution that is explicitly inclusive of Indigenous people.

Despite the referendum bringing promises of legislative equality in Australia, the group known as “Recognise a Better Way” or “the No campaign” —which includes a large number of Indigenous Australians and lawmakers, claims that a referendum would not be the most effective way to implement official change. In its place, the group has proposed an all-party parliamentary committee to recognize the rights of native title holders and migrants.

Speaking to ABC Radio, Warren Mundine, an Indigenous organizer for the group and a former Labor Party national president said, “I don’t believe it needs to be in the constitution … we’re looking at all the problems we’re having at the moment, they can be sorted out for legislation and ministers getting out there and doing their job,”. As it stands, the legislation of Australia can not be altered without a referendum.

Indigenous people of Australia measure far below the national averages on most socioeconomic statistics and in 2022, a government report revealed that the country had failed to meet almost half its target set out to improve the lives of the native people.

While the ‘No’ campaign gains support from right wing organizations, a week of grassroots action is planned from February 20 and an opposing ‘Yes’ campaign is also due to launch. Warren Mundine, a man of Yuin, Bundjalung, and Gumbaynggir heritage insists the ‘No’ campaign is the opportunity for linguistically and culturally diverse voters to form a united front. “We’re talking with the migrant community as well,” he said.

“It’s about recognition of all the people who have come to Australia, who have been here first and how we built this great country of ours.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, along with The Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) is seeking support for a “Yes” vote. Albanese himself is staking a significant amount of political capital on the referendum, despite only eight havingpassed in the history of the country since its independence.

FECCA supports the Uluru Statement of the Heart, and its call for a First Nations voice to be written into the constitution.

Citing plans for a previous referendum, Mundine has rejected a suggestion that the inclusion of migrants in the constitution would overlook Indigenous rights. “No, I see it as bringing people together.”

“Myself and many other people do want to have recognition in the constitution but we don’t believe [the voice to parliament] is the right way to do it.” he added.

Last week, a poll conducted for the Sydney Morning showed the support for the referendum is currently at 47%, dropping from 53% last September.

Sanskrit Code Cracked by PhD Student

A 2500 year old grammatical problem has finally been solved by PhD student Rishi Rajpopat at the University of Cambridge. A grammatical rule by “the father of linguistics” Pāṇini has puzzled experts for centuries, until Rajpopat discovered an algoritim that makes it possible for the first time to fully use Pāṇini’s ‘language machine’. Pāṇini’s system of Sanskrit Aṣṭādhyāyīemploys a derivational system to describe the language, where grammatically correct words and sentences can be derived from suffixes. However, often times two or more rules are simultaneously applicable leaving scholars unsure of which rule to follow.

This led to scholars misinterpreting what is called a ‘metarule’ in which the rule coming later in the grammar’s serial order wins. Rajpopat rejected this ‘metarule’ and instead argued that Panini meant that between rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word respectively, Panini wanted us to choose the rule applicable to the right side. Using this interpretation, Rajpopat found that Pāṇini’s language machine produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.

Rajpopat told the University of Cambridge of his struggle to make progress, in which his supervisor advised him that if his solution is complicated, he is probably wrong.

“Six months later, I had a eureka moment,” Rajpopat says. “I was almost ready to quit, I was getting nowhere. So I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer, swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating.

“Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and, within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns starting emerging, and it all started to make sense.

“At that moment, I thought to myself, in utter astonishment: For over two millennia, the key to Pāṇini’s grammar was right before everyone’s eyes but hidden from everyone’s minds!“

“There was a lot more work to do but I’d found the biggest part of the puzzle. Over the next few weeks I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep and would spend hours in the library including in the middle of the night to check what I’d found and solve related problems. That work took another two and half years.”

Vincenzo Vergiani, Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge, told the University of Cambridge, “My student Rishi has cracked it – he has found an extraordinarily elegant solution to a problem which has perplexed scholars for centuries. This discovery will revolutionise the study of Sanskrit at a time when interest in the language is on the rise.”

Rajpopat also notes that a major effect of the discovery is that the algorithim can bbe used to teach the Sanskrit grammar to computers.

“Computer scientists working on Natural Language Processing gave up on rule-based approaches over 50 years ago”, Rajpopat says.

“So teaching computers how to combine the speaker’s intention with Pāṇini’s rule-based grammar to produce human speech would be a major milestone in the history of human interaction with machines, as well as in India’s intellectual history.”

References

R.A. Rajpopat, ‘In Pāṇini We Trust: Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Aṣṭādhyāyī’,PhD thesis (University of Cambridge, 2022).DOI: 10.17863/CAM.80099

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/solving-grammars-greatest-puzzle

Solving grammar’s greatest puzzle by Tom Almeroth-Williams

AI Can Strengthen Student Writing, Not Weaken It


ChatGPT, a revolutionary chatbot technology, is sparking controversy, debate, and even citywide bans. New York City’s education department recently prohibited the chatbot’s use in schools, citing “negative impacts on student learning and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content.” Other school districts, including Los Angeles and Baltimore, have followed suit. But these swift actions by some of the nation’s largest school systems may reflect fear rather than careful consideration. ChatGPT is just one example of the recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) technology to enable machines to perform tasks in an unprecedented, lifelike manner. As with any new technology, there are potential costs. But if used properly, NLP tools like ChatGPT demonstrate the promise of AI in helping students learn and write better.

ChatGPT is a large language model released late last year by OpenAI, a research company specializing in AI and machine learning products. Large language models are machine learning algorithms engineered to read, analyze, and create original text akin to a human. While ChatGPT is arguably the most popular or attention-grabbing language model, it is just one of the many recent advancements in AI that have revolutionized how people interact in online and educational settings.

Education has been changing for some time, evolving with technology over the past few decades. Online classes, blended learning, and educational software have become more popular in the classroom. Digital technologies have also made it easier for teachers to create and curate educational content and provide personalized instruction to students. Overall, the integration of technology in education has greatly expanded the possibilities for how students can learn, and digital tools have helped make education more accessible and personalized.

ChatGPT presents a positive step forward in this direction. As an example, it can be used for automated writing evaluation—systems that use NLP technologies to automatically assess student writing. Students need more writing evaluations, as few students in the US graduate high school as proficient writers. Less than a third of high school seniors are considered proficient in their writing, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Low-income, Black, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, and English Language Learner (ELL) students fare far worse, with less than 15% scoring proficient on national exams.

Part of the issue is that teachers struggle to find time to provide feedback on student writing and help students improve. More than 70% of educators say they are overwhelmed with grading and other administrative tasks, according to a Learning Agency survey. Educators in low-income schools are also almost 20% more likely than teachers in other schools to report being overburdened by routine duties like grading essays, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Given the high need for writing assessments and feedback, as well as the limited time and resources available to teachers, NLP tools like ChatGPT can be valuable assistants in the classroom. They can provide immediate feedback on various areas of writing since they process and respond to a text at near-lightning speed. When they identify areas of student writing that need improvement, such as word choice, clarity, cohesion, grammar, spelling, and punctuation, they can provide automatic suggestions for improving them.

The power of AI and technology to provide more real-time feedback adds value to a learner’s experience. As an assisted writing feedback tool, ChatGPT can also empower students to take a more active role in their learning progress. For instance, ChatGPT can generate writing prompts and exercises to help students hone their writing skills. Few students can improve their writing because writing-related tasks are infrequently assigned in school. One study found that only a quarter of middle school students and less than a third of high school students write about 30 minutes per day, which is the minimum recommendation for a kindergartener by national experts.

Regular writing practice improves writing skills and enhances critical thinking and communication. ChatGPT can encourage students to write by personalizing prompts based on specific skill areas, such as grammar, sentence structure, or organization. It can also tailor writing exercises to students’ preferred interests, like sports or history, or use culturally relevant and meaningful topics.

Students can also work with ChatGPT to guide their learning and study habits. If a student receives feedback from ChatGPT indicating that their vocabulary and language use are strong but that their grammar and conventions need improvement, they can use this information to focus their efforts on studying grammar rules rather than continuing to focus on vocabulary. When they receive writing assignments tackling issues that matter to them, they are more likely to enjoy the writing experience and find the motivation to improve their skills, resulting in more meaningful and effective learning outcomes.

However, there are concerns that automated tools like ChatGPT may yield more harm than good in the classroom. For instance, some worry the tool may encourage students to plagiarize or limit opportunities for critical thinking. To be fair, these are legitimate concerns. Students will always be desperate for learning shortcuts, and technology may not excite the most disengaged learners. However, there are a growing number of AI detectors to identify ChatGPT-generated text. These detectors use the same algorithmic techniques that power ChatGPT’s capabilities to detect its presence in other writing. Therefore, students can only use ChatGPT to assist with certain aspects of the writing process, not as a replacement for all work.

Moreover, even if schools aren’t ready to permit student use of ChatGPT, NLP tools can still be valuable for teachers. Automatic assessment saves time and effort for the teacher in manual grading. These tools improve the quality and timeliness of assessment and feedback, freeing up time for teachers to focus on more important tasks like researching and developing materials, personalizing instruction, designing assessments, and engaging in professional development. Moreover, ChatGPT can assist in these areas as well. For instance, teachers can use ChatGPT to generate ideas for lesson planning or quizzes.

Some educators have also flipped the script on ChatGPT by using the machine’s responses as source material for classroom discussions on writing quality. Teachers can probe students to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the App’s own writing, as it is prone to make mistakes despite the groundbreaking technology. Sometimes, it even fabricates research citations or uses logical fallacies in its arguments. Teachers can also compare responses written by students to those of the chatbot to pinpoint areas of improvement in both sources and improve their own instructional practices.

NLP tools can also provide teachers with real-time data on student progress, allowing them to provide timely interventions when a student is struggling or provide opportunities for teachers to celebrate and build on students’ strengths. In turn, this can help the teacher track student development over time and improve the overall student learning experience.

Oher tools, such as the open-source algorithms from the “Feedback Prize: English Language Learners” data science competition, demonstrate the promise of AI to support the most vulnerable students with personalized feedback. English Language Learners (ELLs) often struggle most with writing proficiency because  it is the most challenging skill in language development, requiring more processing than reading and speaking. ELLs may also struggle to understand more general feedback that is not tailored to their specific needs. Personalized feedback allows them to receive specific guidance on their language errors and areas of improvement, which can help them better understand the language and improve their writing performance.

Unlike ChatGPT, the ELLIPSE (English Language Learner Insight, Proficiency, and Skills Evaluation) algorithms were specially designed for ELLs. The dataset used to train these algorithms is based on real student writing from the population. Educators and education researchers collaborated to design the scoring rubric, which allows the algorithms to provide a comprehensive assessment of language proficiency and score key language features essential to evaluate in ELL writing: cohesion, syntax, vocabulary, phraseology, grammar, and conventions.

These algorithms can help ELLs understand the relationships between sentences and paragraphs by analyzing cohesion. They can help students master grammatical structures and idiomatic expressions by analyzing syntax and phraseology respectively. Additionally, the tools can help students understand grammatical rules and written conventions of the English language by analyzing grammar and conventions.

The advancements of NLP tools signal a promising future for AI in education. Educators should not fear this technology. Such tools will provide more opportunities for students to learn and improve their skills with feedback tailored to their needs. Scientists and developers should work with teachers, school leaders, instructional designers, and researchers to improve, scale, and customize these tools to assuage fears and increase buy-in. Collaborative implementation of these tools by professionals across the research, technology, and practice sectors would reduce the burden on teachers to be the sole source of feedback and ease anxiety about the presence of AI in classrooms.

Perpetual Baffour is research director at The Learning Agency Lab

Swedish AI Models Preserve 500 Years of History

The National Library of Sweden is harnessing AI technology developed by NVIDIA to preserve almost half a millennium of literature in digital form.

The library, renowned for archiving ancient and modern Swedish literature, is now working on converting millions of documents into accessible digital assets. The project will benefit researchers in humanities subjects, linguistics, history and media studies, but provides a principal role in the preservation and showcase of medieval manuscripts. 

Swedish law requires that a copy of everything officially published in Swedish is submitted to the National Library of Sweden (Kungliga Biblioteket) for public record. This includes state documentation, journals, books, plays, internet content, menus, all TV/film/radio media, and even video games. This enormous body of data – 26 petabytes in total, has provided a plethora of information for NVIDIA GDX systems and everything needed for a comprehensive Swedish-language training program for AI models.

Researchers are currently developing over 24 open-source transformer models to enable research at the library building in Humlegården, Stockholm and other academic institutions around the country.

In 2019, the Kungliga Biblioteket (KB) established a department called the KBLab. Researchers began experimenting on just 5GB of Swedish-language text and sought inspiration from early language processing models created by Google. Soon after, the lab began testing AI training methods on an international data set of Dutch, German, and Norwegian language text. This work continues efforts towards computing larger models for international language research and content translation. 

As results grew more positive, researchers at KBLab began to focus more on their own body of Swedish-language data and upgrading systems. 

The current GDX models are effective in helping researchers create specialized data sets to understand the specific context and nature of every piece of Swedish-language content. From postcards to blog posts, videos, and social media, this technology will also enable language analysts to review how written and spoken Swedish has evolved over time, its societal influences, and distinction from other European languages. 

In addition to the transformer models, KBLab is working on an AI sound-transcription tool, to create a written record of existing digital media. 

Partnering with the University of Gothenburg, KBLab has also announced an upcoming project to support the Swedish Academy’s work to modernize data-driven techniques for creating Swedish-language dictionaries. 

Cuéntame: Meg Medina named Ambassador for Young People’s Literature

Award-winning Cuban-American author Meg Medina has today been announced as the Library of Congress’ National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. 

Notable for her Merci Suárez series, Medina has accepted the two-year position which involves traveling around the country with aims to encourage young people to read, speak to their peers about books, and share their own stories. 

Growing up in Queens, New York, Medina credits her Cuban mother, aunts, and grandmother with her early exposure to storytelling. Speaking to KidsPost, she reflects how her childhood home did not have a lot of books, but her family would share stories via spoken word, “They just filled my mind with stories that had the double benefit of just helping them remember their stories and their lives and helping me understand my culture.”

The role of Ambassador for Young People’s Literature comes with a theme, and Medina has chosen ‘Cuéntame: Let’s Talk Books.’ The Spanish word Cuéntame conceptually refers to the practice of reciting a story to another person. Medina explains that is something you might say when greeting a friend, as an invitation to catch up. “It is like saying ‘What’s going on?’ but it translates literally to ‘story me.’ “ 

Medina has expressed that her goal is to encourage children to perceive books and reading holistically: “as a way that they connect with each other and a way that they find their passion”  rather than just a regulated subject or activity within the school day. She emphasized encouraging children to make their own reading choices and forming an open dialogue as they go. “Up the book love—that’s the goal,” she said. 

The announcement of Medina’s new title comes at a new peak of literary censorship in schools across the US, particularly targeting works with LGBTQ+ themes or characters. Medina’s own 2013 novel “Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass,” won the Pura Belpré Award in 2014 and has repeatedly been met with bans. “The power of reading is in its ability to help people sort of see themselves in the pages, understand themselves and how they act and feel,” Medina expresses. “It’s in helping build empathy for other people.”

She has acknowledged her ambassadorship as a role of great responsibility and has discussed a community-based approach with her most recent predecessor Jason Reynolds. School visits remain a large part of the Ambassador’s duties, but community resources, tips, and activities will be available online in the coming 2023-2024 period. “I think you can look forward to me speaking to kids whose primary language is Spanish,” she confirmed. 

The Library of Congress in Washington will host the first event of Medina’s term on January 24th and it will also be streamed live on its YouTube channel. For those wondering how she will balance her other endeavors, Medina has confirmed that she will continue writing during her ambassadorship and is working on a fantasy project. 

Genes and Languages Don’t Always Sync

An interdisciplinary team from the University of Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) has been investigating if language and genes evolved in tandem over the last few thousand years on a global scale.

The researchers put together a global database linking linguistic and genetic data entitled GeLaTo (Genes and Languages Together), which contains genetic information from some 4,000 individuals speaking 295 languages and representing 397 genetic populations.

In their study, the researchers examined the extent to which the linguistic and genetic histories of populations coincided. People who speak related languages tend to also be genetically related, but this isn’t always the case. “We focused on cases where the biological and linguistic patterns differed and investigated how often and where these mismatches occur,” says Chiara Barbieri, UZH geneticist who led the study and initiated it together with colleagues when she was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute.

The researchers found that about every fifth gene–language relation is a mismatch, and they occur worldwide. These mismatches can provide insights into the history of human evolution. “Once we know where such language shifts happened, we can better reconstruct how languages and populations spread across the world,” says Balthasar Bickel, director of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Evolving Language, who co-supervised the study.

Most mismatches result from populations shifting to the language of a neighboring population that is genetically different. Some peoples on the tropical eastern slopes of the Andes speak a Quechua idiom that is typically spoken by groups with a different genetic profile who live at higher altitudes. The Damara people in Namibia, who are genetically related to the Bantu, communicate using a Khoe language that is spoken by genetically distant groups in the same area. And some hunter-gatherers who live in Central Africa speak predominantly Bantu languages without a strong genetic relatedness to the neighboring Bantu populations.

In addition, there are cases where migrants have picked up the local language of their new homes. The Jewish population in Georgia, for example, adopted a South Caucasian language, while the Cochin Jews in India speak a Dravidian language. The case of Malta reflects its history as an island between two continents: while the Maltese are closely related to the people of Sicily, they speak an Afroasiatic language that is influenced by various Turkish and Indo-European languages.

Preserving Linguistic Identity

“It appears that giving up your language isn’t that difficult, also for practical reasons,” says the study’s last author Kentaro Shimizu, director of the URPP Evolution in Action: From Genomes to Ecosystems.

However, it’s more rare for people to preserve their original linguistic identity despite genetic assimilation with their neighbors. “Hungarian people, for example, are genetically similar to their neighbors, but their language is related to languages spoken in Siberia.”

This makes Hungarian speakers stand out from among the rest of Europe and parts of Asia, where most people speak Indo-European languages, such as French, German, Hindi, Farsi, Greek, and many others. Indo-European has not only been extensively studied but also scores particularly high in terms of genetic and linguistic congruence. “This might have given the impression that gene–language matches are the norm, but our study shows that this isn’t the case,” concludes Chiara Barbieri, who adds that it is important to include genetic and linguistic data from populations all over the world to understand language evolution.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122084119

Bilingual Brains More Agile

Bilingual speakers have more “plastic” brains than do people who speak only one language, according to two recent studies conducted by researchers at Israel’s University of Haifa.

Audio-neuro researcher Hanin Karawani Khoury and her PhD student, Dana Bsharat-Maalouf, tested differences in perception and physiological reactions in about 60 young adults. Half of the subjects were monolingual Hebrew speakers and half were native Arabic speakers fluent in Hebrew as a second language.

The scientists were attempting to understand why bilinguals take much longer than monolinguals to react to audible cues yet demonstrate more subcortical brain activity than those who only speak one language.

“The synchrony between neural and cognitive-perceptual measures makes the research unique and reveals direct brain-behavior links, serving as the basis for a fuller understanding of bilingual speech perception in challenging listening conditions,” Karawani said.
“Whereas the effects of bilingualism on speech perception in noise are widely studied, few studies to date have compared bilingual–monolingual performance when all participants are operating in their dominant language.”

One of their studies, published in PLOS ON, marks the first attempt to examine both perceptual and brain activity in bilingual populations. As expected, both Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals and native Hebrew monolinguals performed better in quiet conditions than in noisy ones. Under noisy conditions, the bilinguals were significantly less accurate in deciphering their second language, but they were faster than monolinguals in detecting the characteristics of speech stimuli.
The researchers believe that’s because bilingual people’s brainstem responses are less susceptible to the effect of noise.
A second study, published in Cognition (www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027722000063), demonstrated more sophisticated brain activity in the bilingual group, as they fared much better than monolinguals in deciphering artificially generated speech.
These findings suggest that bilinguals use a shared mechanism for speech processing under challenging listening conditions.

CAN$39 Million to Support Indigenous Languages in the North

CAN$39.4 million is being invested to support the efforts of communities, organizations, and governments in the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut to reclaim, revitalize, maintain, and strengthen their languages. 

The announcement was made on behalf of the minister of Canadian heritage Pablo Rodríguez at the Yellowknives Dene First Nation community center. This organization is receiving funding to deliver language and culture classes and camps, as well as to develop lesson plans, books, videos, and reference documents, in the Wiiliideh language.

The government of Canada recognizes that the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis are best placed to lead in the reclamation, revitalization, maintenance, and strengthening of their languages. Funds committed to date will increase the number of community-driven activities dedicated to keeping Indigenous languages alive. This investment will facilitate language-learning activities including language instruction, language nests, language and culture camps, land-based teachings, language development and translation, mentor–apprentice programs, and language training for instructors. Funds will also support the development of multimedia resources, dictionaries, online and digital language training, and strategic language plans.

In addition to funding community-based initiatives, these investments will support each of the four Inuit land-claim organizations in developing and implementing their own Indigenous languages strategies. This funding will also support the governments of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories in delivering services, activities, programs, and resources to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in their own languages.

“Intergenerational and systemic impacts of the residential school system have heavily imposed threats to our language. It is important for us to celebrate the revitalization of our language and for everyone to recognize our Wiiliideh language officially. This event is important as it’s an opportunity to advocate for our languages, distinguishing from other languages. This funding is a step forward reconciling our heritage and identity,” commented Chief Edward Sangris of Dettah.

Canadian Language Legislation Could Hinder Indigenous Workers

Proposed changes to Canada’s Official Languages Act are likely to create more “arbitrary barriers” for Indigenous people hoping to work in federal institutions and advance to higher levels, says the Assembly of First Nations. The national advocacy organization, representing more than 600 First Nations across Canada, issued its warning to a parliamentary committee that is studying amendments to the law. Last spring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government introduced plans to reform the Official Languages Act to modernize the legislation, including more measures to promote the use of French. In a brief submitted to the committee, the Assembly of First Nations says the bill “continues the federal government’s approach of privileging English and French while devaluing Indigenous languages.”

Among the amendments proposed to the existing language law, last touched in 1988, is the extension of language rights to federally regulated private businesses in Québec or regions elsewhere in Canada that have a Francophone population. It also specifies that managers and supervisors in federal institutions within Ottawa and Gatineau, Québec, should be able to communicate in both French and English. Only about 10% of First Nations people can speak both official languages, according to the assembly’s submission, so the proposed changes risk limiting who can access those jobs.

“First Nations peoples should not be forced to learn additional colonial languages to be eligible for positions within federal institutions,” the document says.

“The government of Canada’s approach to languages has privileged English and French over Indigenous languages. This is a modern reflection of Canadian colonialism’s exclusion of Indigenous peoples.”

The document recommends that Parliament, in considering changes to the law, should exempt Indigenous employees in federal institutions from bilingual language requirements. Despite presenting its concerns to the official languages committee that is studying the bill, the Assembly of First Nations has not appeared as a witness. And a list of 45 witnesses scheduled to appear does not include representatives of other Indigenous groups. Members of Parliament on the committee have already begun debating a Liberal motion to see the bill and all of its amendments move on to the next stage of the legislative process.

Liberal MP Marc Serré, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of official languages, said Tuesday that “we’re going to look at passing the bill the way it is now.” Conservative MP Joël Godin, who is also a member of the committee, said Indigenous languages are separate from the matter of improving Canada’s laws around providing services in French and English. According to a statement released by the office of the president of the Treasury Board, “The government of Canada understands that some Indigenous public servants may consider official language requirements a barrier to career progression in the federal public service. We are developing a new second language training framework for the public service that is responsive to the needs of all learners, including the specific needs of Indigenous persons. We are also working with Indigenous employees to address any barriers they may face to learning French and English.”

Earlier this year, the federal Treasury Board rejected a call to extend a CAN$800 annual bonus for public servants who are required to speak French and English at work to those who speak an official language and an Indigenous language. Some have also called for the public service to exempt Indigenous employees from having to speak both languages as a way to increase Indigenous representation within its ranks, particularly in senior positions.

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