Adults shamed from speaking indigenous languages hold key to revival, survival
VICTORIA — There’s a generation of indigenous people across Canada who were once shamed for speaking their own language.
Now, people who didn’t learn their mother tongue from their parents are key to saving and revitalizing the languages, British Columbia researchers say.
Two University of Victoria indigenous languages experts whose own parents did not speak their aboriginal languages at home are moving to bridge the language gap with a mentor-apprentice program that teaches adults.
“There were generations of people, my parents and grandparents, who were sent to residential school and forbidden to speak their language and beaten and shamed and ridiculed and punished in all sorts of awful ways for speaking the language,” said Peter Jacobs, a UVic linguist and fluent speaker of his Squamish Nation language.