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INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THE NORTH
Background
2008 has been declared by the United Nations as Language Year. The approach of the United Nations on languages is that all the languages spoken on earth are an invaluable part of the human heritage, including so-called minorized or lesser used languages, which often happen to be indigenous languages. They might not be used by large numbers, but they are a crucial tenet of indigenous identity, of the recognition that a given people has lived in a particular place for thousands and thousands of years and developed through the language an intimate relationship with each other and their environment.
The North is home to dozens of indigenous languages, most of them in a precarious situation today, due to the predominance of languages like English and Russian. Even when the language is taught in primary school, the children grow up in an environment where the indigenous language is not used, except by the elders. In some cases, indigenous languages do not even have a written form or primers and manuals with which to teach and consolidate its writing.
Identifiying isolated languages known only to a few hundreds is in itself a major task. Saving them and passing them onto the next generation requires a major effort on the part of the speakers of the dominant language: they need to recognize the usefulness of the minorized language, its significance for the cultural identify of its speakers and their right to speak it as recognized by the United Nations Chart of Human Rights.
The Northern Forum regions are among those places on earth where more indigenous languages and dialects are spoken than in other locations: Alaska has at least a dozen such languages, Yukon and Alberta have together over twenty indigenous languages, and the Russian North features more than fifty. In a case like the Yukaghir language, only a few dozen people speak it today. If we don't act now, it will disappear in the next generation.
Objectives
The Northern Forum is planning to hold a Language Conference during the course of 2008, possibly jointly with Heritage Canada, as a part of the activities of the Sustainable Development Working Group of the Arctic Council. The SDWG and other Arctic and Northern organizations recognize the importance of reviving and preserving languages that are the expression of indigenous identity, but also the repositories of traditional knowledge regarding one's culture and environment.
The goal is to guarantee that future generations will understand the central part played in their culture by the language, and use it in their everyday traditional activities, even when they are moving away from a traditional lifestyle. It is also important to recognize the place the language holds in the spirituality of indigenous peoples, and therefore to ensure that it is preserved as a way to express beliefs and the relation to the spiritual world.
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