The Squamish Nation is celebrating a milestone in efforts to revitalize their language.
Just 14 years ago the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language, and its key role in transmitting traditional culture, was on the edge of extinction with fewer than 10 fluent speakers thought to remain.
That number has since rebounded to more than 100, and now a 112-year-old Vancouver schoolhouse is set to play a role in pushing the number higher.
On Friday, the nation marked the official opening of ta tsíptspi7lhḵn, the Squamish Nation Language Nest, a facility it hopes will see the language passed on for generations to come.
“We want to keep it alive for all of our ancestors before us who were not able to speak and who attended residential school and day school,” explained Language Nest head teacher Kaiya Williams (Halat).
“We get to call it our home, and with our home is an immersion setting.”
The program started in 2019, but did not have its own dedicated space.
That changed in August, with an agreement between the Squamish Nation and the Vancouver School Board.
The century-old building, known in Kitsilano as the ‘Little Yellow Schoolhouse’ had been slated for demolition, but was instead loaded on a barge and transported to the Nation’s North Vancouver reserve lands.
After six months of renovations, it has been reborn as ta tsíptspi7lhḵn.
The building will now serve as the home of a language immersion program for the community’s youngest babies and toddlers, who will be exposed to fluent speakers.
“We have it set up where it’s in a home-like environment,” Williams explained. “Language is acquired in a natural setting, just like you would have at home.”
The program already has more than a dozen tiny language learners, including Squamish Nation Hereditary Chief Ian Campbell’s young son, now in his second year.
Campbell said he grew up with elders in his life who spoke the language and didn’t realize until he was older that most of his peers weren’t so fortunate.
“So I felt a deep responsibility to keep passing that on,” he said.
“The language is really going to give them the values and the principles of our Squamish people and our relationship and our responsibility to each other, to our territories, and celebrate the richness of culture in this part of the world, so this house really becomes that centre of excellence when it comes to language revitalization.”
There is a sense of reclamation to the project beyond the simple physical reuse of the building.
The schoolhouse’s old location at Cornwall and Maple streets in Kitsilano was not far from the Sen̓áḵw, the Squamish Nation’s village site in what is now Vancouver.
“Our Squamish people were being deemed as squatters in our own lands in downtown Vancouver and evicted and forcibly removed from this particular location where the house previously sat by 1913,” Campbell said, adding that education at that time was openly oppressive to Indigenous peoples.
“So over 100 years later we are seeing this full circle of the house being repurposed.”
The school, he said, shows the resilience of the Squamish language, despite systemic attempts to eradicate it through colonialism and the Indian act.
Now, he said, it will play a crucial role in helping the next generations claim their identity and culture.
“This is an opportunity to mature as a society and look at our shared journey, our shared values,” he said. “And ultimately the empowerment of our children to not assimilate but simply adapt to our ever-changing environment.”