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Chapter 9: Reclaiming Indigenous Languages

Last updated

Mar 18, 2024
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- 8.16: Exercise your linguistics skills
- 9.1: Preserving Mohawk

Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi
eCampusOntario

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As we saw in Chapter 1, Canada’s settler government has engaged for many decades in deliberate strategies to eliminate the languages spoken by Indigenous peoples. Indigenous people have been working for years to try to preserve their languages by increasing the number of people who can speak them, and since the 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the federal government has more openly acknowledged the importance of these efforts.

This chapter includes interviews with several Indigenous experts who are doing the work of preserving and reclaiming their languages, and the work of helping other members of their Nations become speakers.

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