A few months ago, I visited the Royal BC Museum and the exhibit they are currently hosting on Our Living Language-First Peoples’ Voices in British Columbia. The link to the website is available at the bottom of this post and in the link here. If you have a chance to go to the museum and experience it yourself, I would highly recommend it as it an excellent introduction into the rich and diverse array of languages and cultures that exist in BC and it also a shock to see how little remains of the population who is fluent in these languages. Give the age of many of the fluent speakers, audio and video recording technology as well as online technology provide great opportunity for capturing and preserving the language for future generations as well as for sharing and engaging youth in learning their own language and heritage. Not only that, but in many cases it is the young that are taking the initiative to learn, record and then distribute language in their community and this gives them a sense of purpose and the ability to contribute and define how education and technology define learning for their generation and for future generations. I have included the link to the museum and a link to a 2010 report on the status of First Nation Languages in BC. On page 15 of this report, they reference recordings, curriculum materials, and computer-based archiving as the three most important areas of resources in language revitalization.
Our Living Languages | Royal BC Museum http://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/our-living-languages/