For my final weblog post for this course, I wanted to continue what I left off on in my last post. I was discussing the 2 most influential papers that I read during my MET journey (Prensky, 2001) and (Sandwell, 2003). In my previous post I discussed how the fact of being a “digital native” could in fact benefit younger Shuswap students when learning their language and cultural heritage.
The Sandwell article has completely changed the way I look at teaching Socials Studies 11 for example and how vitally important it is to present students with the truth (and not a biased version of it). In this course (ETEC 521), I have also learned that our own Canadian government has hidden the truth from its citizens, especially about the horrors of residential schools in the past. Even in the last weeks, our cohort has discussed information that the government has provided as being incorrect, which continues to be detrimental for our First Nations people.
When reflecting upon Sandwell’s paper, I am interested in how Shuswap language podcasts will be able to be free of bias and tampering of non-Indigenous people. In the past, leaving the information and welfare of our Native people in the hands of our government has often proven to be disastrous. Therefore, the fate of saving the Shuswap language and its cultural heritage must lie in the hands of the Shuswap people themselves. They will need to be very competent “technologically-wise” and therefore must make sure that they have a lot of “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001) on board to help them with the daunting task of documenting and creating language podcasts for the schools. Once non-natives get involved, there is always the risk of the dominance of English or French influences taking over. I know that there are non-native researchers out there that would do their best to record information “without bias” but in the end, I believe that if the Shuswap do everything themselves, there will be no chance of interference from outsiders.
A recording of an elder would be considered a “primary document” in history (Sandwell, 2003). Therefore, documenting it properly would be vitally important. Sandwell says it perfectly:
“Not only does a record of an event, or thought, or belief have to be created, but it has to be preserved if people are going to know about it later”. However, how will these records survive the next 100 years for example? If a historian happens to stumble upon some Shuswap podcasts, will these podcasts be a true representation of what the Shuswap language really represents? What if a historian finds a podcast that was poorly done by someone who doesn’t speak the language well? How will their interpretation of this podcast be distorted then?
There are so many things to think about when documenting an endangered language. It is a project that may take many lifetimes. If we think of the English language for example. It is constantly changing and taking on new forms. Will endangered Indigenous languages follow this same pattern or will different mutations of them be developed, due to the influence of missed generations of speakers and the fact that language survival is depended strongly on technology?
I hope that in my lifetime, I don’t have to witness anymore Indigenous languages that have gone extinct. It is a huge undertaking but as part of our Canadian history, I think we owe it to our First Nations people who deserve the chance to revitalize their languages and to preserve their precious and rich cultural heritage.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives Digital Immigrants: On the Horizon. NCB
University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5.
Sandwell, R. (2003). Reading Beyond Bias: Using Historical Documents in the Secondary
Classroom. Revue de Sciences de l’Éducation de McGill. Vol. 38, No 1.
