‘Each First Nation needs to ask: Is language important to us?’ says Anishinabek Nation Language Commissioner

By Mary Laronde

NIPISSING FIRST NATION— Barbara Nolan, Anishinabek Nation Language Commissioner, recently said that First Nations must ask that question as a first step toward stopping the downward trend toward extinction.

“Our language will disappear and we will disappear, too. Our language and culture go hand-in-hand. Our history and values will be lost if our language is lost. Language passes on all that we are as Anishinaabe people.”

Commissioner Nolan was speaking to 65 participants at the Apr. 29 virtual Governance Summit event, Foundations of Governance: The Role of Anishinaabe Traditions and Language.

“As of 2001, up to 70 First Nations languages became extinct over the last 100 years,” she noted. “Cree, Ojibway and Inuktituk were considered safe from extinction but now Ojibway and Cree are threatened.”

The Anishinabek Nation Socio-Demographic Profile (July 20, 2018), notes that from 1996 to 2016, the percentage of Ojibway speakers in Anishinabek Nation First Nations has declined by about 60%. The percentage that usually speak Ojibway at home fell from 14% to 5%. By 2016, only 7% of the residents of the 23 communities (for which there is data available) identified Ojibway as the first language they learned.

When Anishinaabemowin is not the first language learned, Commissioner Nolan says the question then becomes, “How do we acquire a second language?” Nolan has answers. She maintains that acquiring a second language is not the same as learning a second language. Acquiring a language is a subconscious, slow, but relatively permanent process; whereas learning a language is a conscious, faster process, but forgotten quickly.

“We need to listen for a long time, then we hear messages, then we understand, then we speak.”

Commissioner Nolan points to academic research on the time required to create fluent speakers. She recommends language nests where only Anishinaabemowin is spoken. In a six-hour per day immersion program, by the time a baby is two years old, they have heard 3,200 hours of Anishinaabemowin and understand 90%. At Grade 8, students in immersion programs have the 12,000 hours it takes to be a fluent speaker, able read and write Anishinaabemowin.

“First Nations need to identify how many fluent speakers they have. Some have lots of fluent speakers but don’t utilize them. Communities with no speakers have to borrow them. We have to get away from saying, ‘That is not our dialect, you are not from this community.’”

Language and culture are key components of the proposed Anishinabek Nation Governance Agreement. First Nations that ratify the Governance Agreement will have sufficient funding to implement its priorities. Nipissing First Nation has recently ratified the Governance Agreement and looks to language laws as helping the community keep their language and having the funding to support what needs to be done.

Nipissing First Nation Elders Evelyn McLeod and Lorraine Commanda were joined by Councillor Jane Commanda and language teachers Tory Fisher and Blair Beaucage to present a panel on their journey to acquire Anishinaabemowin.

“In our constitution, it states that Anishinaabemowin is our first language. There is new growth in this area and we can integrate Anishinaabemowin in our services at our First Nation administration,” Fisher said. “Learning this language is tough. You have to have the drive and put in the time.”

Both Fisher and Beaucage acknowledged their teacher and “language warrior”, Muriel Sawyer-baa, as the inspiring and guiding force in becoming language teachers in the school where they were her students.