Language and Formal Cultural Education

Abstract

In November 2003, the annual conference of the Sweetgrass First Nations Language Council, organized by members of the Woodland Cultural Centre, had outgrown the premises in Brantford, and was transplanted to the roomy facilities of the University of Western Ontario. Plenary sessions took place in a large lecture theater, with raised seating to accommodate an audience of several hundred, and a substantial stage at the front. Again, I had received permission to attend as an observer, and one particular event made a strong impres­sion on me. It involved a group of four young people who had been invited to speak about the experience of learning the original language of the Indigenous group into which they had been born. The lan­guages—Cayuga and Mohawk—are now seriously endangered, and many adults in the communities where the speakers had been raised know little of them. They had tackled a lonely task then, and Lottie Keye, the teacher who presented them, was justifiably proud that they had made good progress. She asked them to speak for just five min­utes to say how knowing their language had made them better people and how they would use it in the future.

Culture is the Education for your life.

Lesikar Ole Ngila, Maasai

They put you through hell just to save you.

Vince Bomberry, Cayuga artist, on Christian residential schools