Reconciliation is Irrelevant. First Nations Languages & the Future of Canada.
09 November 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so I got a question about the future of
First Nations in Canada which is partly a purely political issue and it's partly an educational issue okay so I want to say issue you want to say question it's a question that's gonna be answered partly in the in the purest political sense it's gonna be decided in Parliament it's gonna be decided on the streets it could be decided through our revolution but that seems unlikely seems like armed uprisings are not going to be that important in the 21st century and in determining this issue could be could be and there are some really extreme circumstances that any outside observer would say would justify armed uprisings so that that may be in the cards nevertheless 21st century as pathetic and self-destructive as those violent uprisings may be nevertheless that is definitely possible in terms of what happens in the next few decades of these negotiations for the future but yeah on the one hand there's there are purely political decisions to be made about the future First Nations and then there are educational decisions there's a question of whether or not the Cree language is going to go extinct so in sitting of whatever say on this one I remember at once at a conversation with a guy it he was a full time teacher at the Korean language I was at that time a full time student of the Korean language and he was very particular and clarifying to me in terms the use of verbs in English he didn't see his job description as preserving the curry language he saw his his his job as promulgating the Korean language we don't use the word promulgate that often English and that really made me stop and think about how he sees himself how he sees his job how he sees the struggle for these languages and these people in the future and the interesting point cos for me also my involvement with First Nations was very forward-looking I wasn't interested in studying or preserving their traditional culture I'm interested in the future of these languages in the future these people of course have interests in their history to some extent but I basically have a forward-looking engage with these issues now by contrast I once saw a TV interview with a First Nations language advocate from the West Coast and on the west coast of Canada the situation is really different because you have really small pockets of languages and they're all close to extinction and there's no easy way forward in terms of merging into larger units you don't mean that the threat of language distinction is very real and it's very different though so this this particular guy being interviewed he was working to revive a language that I think got down to only five living speakers some of that the last five or ten people who could speak this language and then he revived it partly just through the glory of the Internet he called for volunteers he asked people to just volunteer this language regardless of their ethnic heritage he said hey look this language is close to extinction I want it gets people together and so you know that was why this was a TV news item was it was a relatively fun and upbeat attitude towards very serious issue and he had some success so I forget he got it up to fifty people or something who could speak this language and had some fun with it and obviously because the language was so close to extinction I think he did make some simplifications to the language he made it easier to learn you know and put together an easy-to-use dictionary and this kind of thing you know easy to use educational materials but of course there's a question there too if you're doing that to what extent is this becoming a fictional language you know a constructed language people like to say is it becoming something like elvish from Lord of the Rings or you really accurately you know preserving and promulgating an indigenous language so those questions but in the interview with this guy I remember he said and you know this was a this was his official position he said he recognizes that the language he's supporting will never be a language used to buy a hot dog at a hot dog stand in downtown Vancouver or in any big city but that he sees the role of the language as being something that's just special within that community when the people who have that that ancestry or that heritage or people who want to join people who are become part of the community and I remember sitting and listening to that and before I heard him say that I really thought you know that is the opposite of what I believe it to me it really matters that at First Nations University of Canada the no-smoking signs are in English I don't want that I want them to say no smoking in Cree to me it really matters that when you go up to a bank machine in that part of Canada that time the bay Sheena's with eight buttons four languages it is mentioned there were eight buttons on the screen you could also use the number of buttons and the language choices are English French or Chinese to me it really matters that we have Cree a jib lei Mohawk we have some other buttons there for some other languages why because this is Canada I you know theoretically I really do want there to be hot dog vendors I'm vegan so it's not the best example for me to me it really matters whether or not in downtown Vancouver there is a role for indigenous languages in that culture in that society I am actually not comfortable at all with these languages and cultures being remaindered to reservations I mean remainder it is maybe nothing but you know guess it is what I mean you know the actual process of creating reservations of putting up fences and walls and saying those people exist over there that culture exists over there that is you know that is something very fundamentally I opposed of course I think it was bad historically looking back what the point is we're now looking forward now looking at the change we can make in the future and I feel like saying no goddamnit either this language exists at the bank you look at the bank machine at the hotdog stand or it doesn't exist at all and this is a really false attitude to think you can you can preserve a language within those those dotted lines and you know no no no back when is the First Nations University of Canada I talked the professor's about getting the first physics textbook in the Korean language the first chemistry textbook and I said if we don't do this the language dies another specific example what about the Constitution of Canada what about the Constitution United States if you've ever seen the Constitution in the United States written in a native language it's written in English of course you know Constitution Canada's written English in French why you know why either this matters enough to be in these languages also you know of course there are more difficult questions probably the hardest thing is policing or court you know can you plead your own case in course it heard me can you plead your own case in court can you appear in Parliament and talk politics in these languages they're not on and on and on it goes so this is an answer to a question the actual wording of the question I was given is what do I think about the reconciliation process and my response that's kind of parallel to that anecdote I told about the teacher who didn't want to talk about extinction and preservation he wants use the word promulgate I do not see this in terms of reconciliation at all like to me that's irrelevant I don't care if you're reconciled or not I care about when you go to the bank machine what language is there at the bank machine I care about even in theory can you go into things can you go into the bank and get a loan you know as a native person it's a huge bear I mean that always is with racism that's one of the most telling signs of racism do black people really have equal access to a mortgage or a home loan alone to build a new home or something - white people of course for most of most American history the answer was no the racism was most obvious in getting a loan at a bank but you know do Native people really have the ability to do that as Native people just because of racism willing but then do they have the ability that in their own language it's a huge huge step to fill out a loan application in Korea or Ghibli you know to me that has nothing to do with reconciliation if you just think about it implicitly what I'm talking about is a very different very different vision of the future very different kind of society and there are precedents you know one of the most extreme is Switzerland somebody thinks of Switzerland Switzerland is a modern Western democracy they have all the good things of a democratic society but they take really seriously the rights of indigenous languages including some very small languages like Romansh Romansh ROM OSH I've met I want a member of that of that group which is a latin derived language native there including a course there are Italians the Swiss Italians and so and so forth and even Swiss German itself where they take really seriously the obligation to education in these languages to access government services in these languages you know Switzerland has done it in some ways an example like Switzerland I think is a positive sample of the way forward and you know China gets a lot of bad press for different ethnic groups in China it's a different story but I got to tell you where we are right now into Hong China when I walk down the street every road sign is in three languages every single road sign all of the government services signs they're in Chinese de Hong died and gene pool gene pool is also known as catch N it's the same language you know and they take very seriously there are very serious foundations for each of those groups the the best high school here the best high school is the ethnic minority high school which is devoted to serving those people not the worst you'll never see that in Canada never once do you see white people saying they're competing to get their kids into a Cree high school competing to get their kids into a and Ojibwe high school the Chinese people compete to try to get their kids into the ethnic minority high school and primary school and middle school by the way because it's the best school the best the most elite education here is the special education for for Native people it's excellent you know the pursuit of excellence in education for Native people and yes I mean at my own University campus last night I was taking the bus home you know they were they were practicing tribal dances on campus that is mentioned as that as the bus went out last night as I was on the way home from work now you know obviously some of that stuff is a little bit Disneyland but hey that's okay I'm not I'm not so opposed to Disney way video literally we have people in tribal garb dancing with swords and bows and arrows that's part of the preservation of culture here too you guys probably get that's not really the side of the game I relate to positively that's not really what I'm into but some people are and that's gonna be a piece in the puzzle too yes you know that kind of you know surface level cultural preservation so yeah that's really my my response is to me the word reconciliation is irrelevant you know I don't want reconciliation I want to win like I really see as a struggle where the question is will Native people win a place for themselves in Parliament got you know right now there is ZERO representation of Native people in Parliament there is ZERO representation of Native people in the you know the Bureau of Indian Affairs ezio who's ridiculous it's just a white man assigned as an as a portfolio at a parliament to be the the dictator over First Nations we have a ridiculous colonial system of government legacy of British parliamentary system and so on it makes absolutely no sense for our First Nations people our government and so on there are very obvious political changes that need to happen but none of them can be explained in terms of reconciliation there are very obvious changes that need to happen in terms of just land ownership who owns Toronto Island I could give a million examples of that terms of settlement land ownership whose gonna do something really positive and visionary for the future in terms of you know giving First Nations the foothold in this country that Ukrainians got Ukrainians God and took for granted look up the history of preemption in British Columbia they were handing out valuable farmland farmland that's now worth millions of dollars they're handing a personal land for free to anyone who was white at exactly the same time they were taking away from native people this is not ancient history and those people the people who got preemption in British Columbia the people who got that land for free they're today the millionaire class of BC they're now the wealthy in that province but in order you know so we did that to help Ukrainian immigrants we handed out free land Ukrainians and Germans and poles and those the people who settled Western Canada but you know they didn't even speak English you know the just saying it wasn't like the British Empire only only benefited white British people but it only benefited white people it was a very very clear racial racist in Rachel's mandate so in terms of really transferring a lot of land and valuable land not remote land nobody wants you know and that we kicked them off then when we discovered diamonds are gold under that remote land then they get kicked off again and this is a huge pattern in Canada because we give them what we think is worthless lay but no I can't I can't see that in terms of reconciliation it's not a question of two sides that need to be reconciled it's a it's a disaster that we need to dig our way out of and either we're going to dig our way out of it before the languages go extinct or after
First Nations in Canada which is partly a purely political issue and it's partly an educational issue okay so I want to say issue you want to say question it's a question that's gonna be answered partly in the in the purest political sense it's gonna be decided in Parliament it's gonna be decided on the streets it could be decided through our revolution but that seems unlikely seems like armed uprisings are not going to be that important in the 21st century and in determining this issue could be could be and there are some really extreme circumstances that any outside observer would say would justify armed uprisings so that that may be in the cards nevertheless 21st century as pathetic and self-destructive as those violent uprisings may be nevertheless that is definitely possible in terms of what happens in the next few decades of these negotiations for the future but yeah on the one hand there's there are purely political decisions to be made about the future First Nations and then there are educational decisions there's a question of whether or not the Cree language is going to go extinct so in sitting of whatever say on this one I remember at once at a conversation with a guy it he was a full time teacher at the Korean language I was at that time a full time student of the Korean language and he was very particular and clarifying to me in terms the use of verbs in English he didn't see his job description as preserving the curry language he saw his his his job as promulgating the Korean language we don't use the word promulgate that often English and that really made me stop and think about how he sees himself how he sees his job how he sees the struggle for these languages and these people in the future and the interesting point cos for me also my involvement with First Nations was very forward-looking I wasn't interested in studying or preserving their traditional culture I'm interested in the future of these languages in the future these people of course have interests in their history to some extent but I basically have a forward-looking engage with these issues now by contrast I once saw a TV interview with a First Nations language advocate from the West Coast and on the west coast of Canada the situation is really different because you have really small pockets of languages and they're all close to extinction and there's no easy way forward in terms of merging into larger units you don't mean that the threat of language distinction is very real and it's very different though so this this particular guy being interviewed he was working to revive a language that I think got down to only five living speakers some of that the last five or ten people who could speak this language and then he revived it partly just through the glory of the Internet he called for volunteers he asked people to just volunteer this language regardless of their ethnic heritage he said hey look this language is close to extinction I want it gets people together and so you know that was why this was a TV news item was it was a relatively fun and upbeat attitude towards very serious issue and he had some success so I forget he got it up to fifty people or something who could speak this language and had some fun with it and obviously because the language was so close to extinction I think he did make some simplifications to the language he made it easier to learn you know and put together an easy-to-use dictionary and this kind of thing you know easy to use educational materials but of course there's a question there too if you're doing that to what extent is this becoming a fictional language you know a constructed language people like to say is it becoming something like elvish from Lord of the Rings or you really accurately you know preserving and promulgating an indigenous language so those questions but in the interview with this guy I remember he said and you know this was a this was his official position he said he recognizes that the language he's supporting will never be a language used to buy a hot dog at a hot dog stand in downtown Vancouver or in any big city but that he sees the role of the language as being something that's just special within that community when the people who have that that ancestry or that heritage or people who want to join people who are become part of the community and I remember sitting and listening to that and before I heard him say that I really thought you know that is the opposite of what I believe it to me it really matters that at First Nations University of Canada the no-smoking signs are in English I don't want that I want them to say no smoking in Cree to me it really matters that when you go up to a bank machine in that part of Canada that time the bay Sheena's with eight buttons four languages it is mentioned there were eight buttons on the screen you could also use the number of buttons and the language choices are English French or Chinese to me it really matters that we have Cree a jib lei Mohawk we have some other buttons there for some other languages why because this is Canada I you know theoretically I really do want there to be hot dog vendors I'm vegan so it's not the best example for me to me it really matters whether or not in downtown Vancouver there is a role for indigenous languages in that culture in that society I am actually not comfortable at all with these languages and cultures being remaindered to reservations I mean remainder it is maybe nothing but you know guess it is what I mean you know the actual process of creating reservations of putting up fences and walls and saying those people exist over there that culture exists over there that is you know that is something very fundamentally I opposed of course I think it was bad historically looking back what the point is we're now looking forward now looking at the change we can make in the future and I feel like saying no goddamnit either this language exists at the bank you look at the bank machine at the hotdog stand or it doesn't exist at all and this is a really false attitude to think you can you can preserve a language within those those dotted lines and you know no no no back when is the First Nations University of Canada I talked the professor's about getting the first physics textbook in the Korean language the first chemistry textbook and I said if we don't do this the language dies another specific example what about the Constitution of Canada what about the Constitution United States if you've ever seen the Constitution in the United States written in a native language it's written in English of course you know Constitution Canada's written English in French why you know why either this matters enough to be in these languages also you know of course there are more difficult questions probably the hardest thing is policing or court you know can you plead your own case in course it heard me can you plead your own case in court can you appear in Parliament and talk politics in these languages they're not on and on and on it goes so this is an answer to a question the actual wording of the question I was given is what do I think about the reconciliation process and my response that's kind of parallel to that anecdote I told about the teacher who didn't want to talk about extinction and preservation he wants use the word promulgate I do not see this in terms of reconciliation at all like to me that's irrelevant I don't care if you're reconciled or not I care about when you go to the bank machine what language is there at the bank machine I care about even in theory can you go into things can you go into the bank and get a loan you know as a native person it's a huge bear I mean that always is with racism that's one of the most telling signs of racism do black people really have equal access to a mortgage or a home loan alone to build a new home or something - white people of course for most of most American history the answer was no the racism was most obvious in getting a loan at a bank but you know do Native people really have the ability to do that as Native people just because of racism willing but then do they have the ability that in their own language it's a huge huge step to fill out a loan application in Korea or Ghibli you know to me that has nothing to do with reconciliation if you just think about it implicitly what I'm talking about is a very different very different vision of the future very different kind of society and there are precedents you know one of the most extreme is Switzerland somebody thinks of Switzerland Switzerland is a modern Western democracy they have all the good things of a democratic society but they take really seriously the rights of indigenous languages including some very small languages like Romansh Romansh ROM OSH I've met I want a member of that of that group which is a latin derived language native there including a course there are Italians the Swiss Italians and so and so forth and even Swiss German itself where they take really seriously the obligation to education in these languages to access government services in these languages you know Switzerland has done it in some ways an example like Switzerland I think is a positive sample of the way forward and you know China gets a lot of bad press for different ethnic groups in China it's a different story but I got to tell you where we are right now into Hong China when I walk down the street every road sign is in three languages every single road sign all of the government services signs they're in Chinese de Hong died and gene pool gene pool is also known as catch N it's the same language you know and they take very seriously there are very serious foundations for each of those groups the the best high school here the best high school is the ethnic minority high school which is devoted to serving those people not the worst you'll never see that in Canada never once do you see white people saying they're competing to get their kids into a Cree high school competing to get their kids into a and Ojibwe high school the Chinese people compete to try to get their kids into the ethnic minority high school and primary school and middle school by the way because it's the best school the best the most elite education here is the special education for for Native people it's excellent you know the pursuit of excellence in education for Native people and yes I mean at my own University campus last night I was taking the bus home you know they were they were practicing tribal dances on campus that is mentioned as that as the bus went out last night as I was on the way home from work now you know obviously some of that stuff is a little bit Disneyland but hey that's okay I'm not I'm not so opposed to Disney way video literally we have people in tribal garb dancing with swords and bows and arrows that's part of the preservation of culture here too you guys probably get that's not really the side of the game I relate to positively that's not really what I'm into but some people are and that's gonna be a piece in the puzzle too yes you know that kind of you know surface level cultural preservation so yeah that's really my my response is to me the word reconciliation is irrelevant you know I don't want reconciliation I want to win like I really see as a struggle where the question is will Native people win a place for themselves in Parliament got you know right now there is ZERO representation of Native people in Parliament there is ZERO representation of Native people in the you know the Bureau of Indian Affairs ezio who's ridiculous it's just a white man assigned as an as a portfolio at a parliament to be the the dictator over First Nations we have a ridiculous colonial system of government legacy of British parliamentary system and so on it makes absolutely no sense for our First Nations people our government and so on there are very obvious political changes that need to happen but none of them can be explained in terms of reconciliation there are very obvious changes that need to happen in terms of just land ownership who owns Toronto Island I could give a million examples of that terms of settlement land ownership whose gonna do something really positive and visionary for the future in terms of you know giving First Nations the foothold in this country that Ukrainians got Ukrainians God and took for granted look up the history of preemption in British Columbia they were handing out valuable farmland farmland that's now worth millions of dollars they're handing a personal land for free to anyone who was white at exactly the same time they were taking away from native people this is not ancient history and those people the people who got preemption in British Columbia the people who got that land for free they're today the millionaire class of BC they're now the wealthy in that province but in order you know so we did that to help Ukrainian immigrants we handed out free land Ukrainians and Germans and poles and those the people who settled Western Canada but you know they didn't even speak English you know the just saying it wasn't like the British Empire only only benefited white British people but it only benefited white people it was a very very clear racial racist in Rachel's mandate so in terms of really transferring a lot of land and valuable land not remote land nobody wants you know and that we kicked them off then when we discovered diamonds are gold under that remote land then they get kicked off again and this is a huge pattern in Canada because we give them what we think is worthless lay but no I can't I can't see that in terms of reconciliation it's not a question of two sides that need to be reconciled it's a it's a disaster that we need to dig our way out of and either we're going to dig our way out of it before the languages go extinct or after