The United Nations has dedicated 2019 to honouring Indigenous languages across the globe, which Blackfoot elders say is one of the most vital components to the maintenance of Native cultures.
“Language is about life,” said Joyce Healy, a Blackfoot elder.
“Language articulates the belief system, the values, the concepts and how people think,” Healy continued, “and it does not matter what colour you are, whether you’re red, white, yellow or black — that’s the commonality that we have.”
In 2019, officials with the UN said they hope to bring attention to the significant loss of Indigenous languages throughout the world, a sentiment that a local Blackfoot woman agrees with.
WATCH: (Feb. 20, 2019) International year of Indigenous languages
Marcia Black Water with Indigenous Services at Lethbridge College said Indigenous peoples have been fighting the loss of their languages across Canada for years, a struggle that dates back to the implementation of residential schools in the late 1800s.
“You’ve heard of the phrase of killing the Indian in the child,” Black Water said, “and that was one of the ways that taking that language and scaring it out of our young children
“There was somebody who really, truly believed that if the language of Indigenous nations — whatever language they held, whether it was Blackfoot or Cree or whatever languages are out there — that if that loss of language came, that the culture would die.”
But now, Healy said we’re entering a time where Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations really have to work together to revitalize the words that were once taken from them.
“It has to be a movement that’s led not only by our leadership but our educational institutions,” Healy said. “It will be an academic movement, because my people are very intellectual.”
In light of disappearing languages across the country, elders added that the implementation of Indigenous language classes in post-secondary institutions is one way to help pass on native tongues to younger generations.
“I think it’s important to acknowledge that we’re speaking English in a place where that is not the native language,” said Inge Genee, a linguistics professor at the University of Lethbridge.
“We can all gain a little bit more understanding of what the culture really is through the language.”
Black Water added that after years of repression, the number of fluent speakers in native populations is quickly depleting, but she has hope those numbers will rise once again
“We are losing the people who teach us, but there are people that they have taught and i think that is the hope that I always embrace.”