‘Race against time’ to save Indigenous languages
How technology helps revive the ‘disappearing’ languages one app at a time
Brenda Wastescoot (Courtesy of Brenda Wastescoot)
Brenda Wastasecoot is proud of being fluent in Cree, but growing up she was suppressed from using her native language.
“The whole agenda of Canada was to assimilate Indians … to make everybody basically becomes English or French speaking,” Wastasecoot said. “There was a process – humiliation tactics that the teachers would use for those that don’t speak English well.”
Wastasecoot went to a public school in Churchill, Manitoba. The situation was worse in residential schools, as those who resisted “took the beating and punishment,” the Indigenous studies professor at the University of Toronto said.
She added that many Indigenous people ended up losing their identity and culture.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report in 2015 used the term cultural genocide to describe the consequences of government policies, such as the residential school system and assimilation.
Wastasecoot said it’s one of the reasons why Indigenous languages are in a declining state.
UNESCO, a United Nation’s agency on education and culture, stated Canada’s Indigenous languages are among the most endangered in the world. Out of more than 60 languages, only three – Cree, Ojibwe, and Inuktitut – are expected to survive.
The sense of urgency wasn’t lost on Mike Parkhill, founder of SayITFirst, a company that aims to modernize and revitalize Indigenous languages in Canada through the use of technology.
“We’re on a race against time,” Parkhill said.
The former Microsoft Canada executive was involved in the development of Microsoft Windows and Office in Inuktitut language. Working closely with the communities in Nunavut had a “profound effect” on him and he decided to quit his job with the software giant in 2009 to help digitize Indigenous languages and knowledge.
SayITFirst has published more than 20 children’s books in Maliseet, Mi’Kmaw, Ojibway, and Cree. The native languages are accompanied by a simplified phonetic system, allowing parents and teachers to properly pronounce the words.
The books can also be accessed for free on the company’s website.
“So the thought wasn’t … the way to preserve the language was through books. But it was through that oral transportation from the words of the parents to a child,” Parkhill explained.
Using the Aurasma app, which can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play Store, readers can get more digital content by pointing the device’s camera at specific images or objects on the books.
The Canadian best-selling author said he’s hiring Indigenous students to illustrate future children’s books.
Parkhill said he’s also working on a project that will translate native Canadian languages into or from 130 languages, using Microsoft’s Translator Hub tool.
“We’re still working the bugs out. At this point, we’re trying to experiment how fast and how far we can go with this,” the Halifax native said, adding that the main goal would be to allow people to look up fully-conjugated verbs.
The First Peoples’ Cultural Council, based in Brentwod Bay, B.C., has also been utilizing a digital platform to support the revitalization of Indigenous languages through its FirstVoices program.
Established in 2003, the program sees the organization collaborating with Indigenous communities in archiving and teaching of the native languages.
“The project is completely driven by the community members themselves,” said Shaylene Boechler, First Peoples’ outreach manager and FirstVoices co-ordinator.
The result is a web-based interactive multimedia hub that is rich in phrase collections, pictures, sounds, and videos. The website has thousands of entries in various Indigenous writing systems.
Understanding the importance of listening to the needs of the communities, the organization has also created a keyboard app.
“We’re living in such a digital age. Language learning has to be relevant to their lives,” Boechler said. “One of the reasons we created the keyboard app was because youths from the communities reached out to us and said they want to be able to text in their language.”
The “FirstVoices Keyboards” app includes every First Nations language in Canada and is available for iOS and Android devices.
The feedback has been “excellent,” according to Boechler. She added that a language has to be learned and passed on to the younger generation for it to thrive.
Wastasecoot echoed the sentiment.
She pointed out that many elders are “dying off,” making it even more critical for young people to actively participate in the effort to preserve and revitalize the language.
“A lot of kids don’t know what happened to their parents and grandparents. When they do learn about that, they have a sense of purpose to learn,” said Wastasecoot.
“Their parents suffered to be able to speak their language.”
