Brief
Part 1: Explore the First People’s Map of BC
Part 2: Explore the Native Land Digital Map and find your locale.
Part 3: What did you notice about these two maps? Notice your observations about your locale, region and area. Name any connections, discrepancies, wonderings, surprises, or alignments. Review the two maps and think about what it means to create a territorial acknowledgement.
CBC put together an article named, What’s wrong with Land Acknowledgements, and how to make them better. This article highlighted the thoughts, advice, and expectations from five First Nations individuals to debunk the notion that land acknowledgements have become a tokenism and performative task rather than a deeply reflective and immersive experience and process of reconciliation.
Mapping Cultural Histories: Map Comparison
In the First People’s Map of BC, I found that it included information on the language, arts and heritage of each Indigenous group. I found it compelling that the Indigenous regions were layered over a contemporary map showing cities, territories and “Westernized” names of places. This approach made it easier to locate my are and understand the relationship to Indigenous lands, blending with historical and modern geographical references in a way that highlights the present-day identities first and foremost before thinking about the land’s Indigenous history.
When exploring the Native Land Digital Map and locating my area, I was struck by the layers of Indigenous territories, languages and Treaties that intersected with each other. The biggest difference when it came to locating my area was how much more challenging it was with the Native Land Digital Map, as it presents the land according to the original territories Indigenous peoples occupied before colonization, offering a distinctly Indigenous perspective. Navigating this map required more effort to locate my area, encouraging a more intentional reflection on land stewardship and my connection (or rather disconnect) to the land. This approach invited me to consider how our contemporary cities relate to their Indigenous histories, creating more awareness of the deeper cultural narratives embedded within the landscapes we inhabit today.
Residential Schools and Impact on Indigenous Languages
With my background in languages and linguistics, I decided to delve deeper into the kinds of information that the map provided about the different Indigenous languages of each region.
While looking through the various languages regions, there are statistics of the total population of each nation, with a count of fluent speakers, semi-speakers and active learners.
Many of the regions had only single digit amount of fluent speakers, and more had none fluent speakers left. I learned that languages are considered “asleep” when there are no first speakers left.
Many sleeping languages do not have fluent speakers at all, and those who are re-learning their first languages are considered “silent speakers”, meaning that they understand their languages, but cannot speak it. Often, these silent speakers are survivors of residential schools whose abilities to speak their first language were “beaten out of them” or lost them when raised in non-native foster families.
Residential schools systematically severed the ties which Indigenous culture is taught and sustained by “killing the Indian in the child” and actively contributes to a general loss of language and culture amongst Indigenous children. In other words, it is a purposeful attempt to eradicate aspects of Indigenous cultures and lifeworlds.
Cultural Continuity Through Language Revitalization Efforts
Languages are vital for passing down a people’s knowledge of their land and way of life. Below is a Youtube video where Khelsilem discusses the importance of preservation and revitalization of Indigenous languages in Canada, as they are crucial for maintaining cultural identity and community well-being for Indigenous communities.
First Voices is a website for communities to share and promote their language, oral culture and linguistic history, promoting linguistic diversity and providing a platform to work with experienced language educators, band councils and language communities to plan language revitalization and preservation programs.
Aligning with Khelsilem’s advocacy for language revitalization through community-driven education and use of technology, efforts towards creating professional audio recordings, physical archives of audio, photos and written sources are being made by younger generations to ensure that their Elder’s voices are preserved.
Land Acknowledgements at Langara College
With my previous position working at the Modern Languages Department at Langara College, I think the following are some potential points that are necessary to incorporate while thinking about Indigenization, decolonization and reconciliation when it comes to land acknowledgements.
Firstly, is to acknowledging the relationship between Langara College and the Musqeam peoples. Langara College is located on the unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam First Nation, and Langara College is honored to receive the Musqueum name snəw̓eyəɬ leləm̓, which means house of teachings.
Secondly, I believe it is important to acknowledge the privileges that we have currently to be able to speak, utilize, and learn about different languages and cultures freely, some with the intention to connect with their cultural heritage, or with the intention to expand their intercultural and linguistics competencies, as this was not the case for Indigenous children who were put into residential schools.
Lastly, in the context of languages offered at Langara College (i.e. Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish) it is important to consider histories of these languages as tools for colonization; Chinese Mandarin as the language promoted through regional expansion during periods like the Cultural Revolution; Japanese imperialism imposed across East Asia as an effort to assimilate local populations into the Japanese Empire; and French and Spanish spreading through European colonization of the America’s Africa and Asia, often at the cost of Indigenous languages and local minority languages and dialects.
Highlighting the history of colonization shows the power of language policies and role it plays in colonization, while also emphasizing the power of languages as symbols of cultural resilience, making languages a form of resistance and cultural continuity, reclaiming identity and heritage and incorporation of decolonization efforts into language learning.