N.B. needs immersion-style language education for First Nations students

ElevenFirst Nations language immersion teachers spent ThursdayatSt. Mary's First Nation learning about Indigenous immersion classes.

Conor Quinn, a documentary makerand linguist whoteaches the course, knows both theMaliseet andMi'kmaqlanguages,and has a workingknowledge of 30 others.

He says he knowsfirst hand how it feelsto wanttounderstandone'sancestral language, which is how he felt aboutIrish Gaelic before he finally learned it.

"It's hard to learn and there are reasons whypeople stop speaking it, or felt pressured to stop speaking it, because people say 'What's the point of learning it?' Basically all of the colonial mindset," said Quinn.

These languages are the heart and soul for our land and people and these languages are being systematically killedoff.- Andrea Bear Nicholas

Quinn isan advocate of an immersion-style of learning because it's worked in other parts of the world.

He cited theMaori of New Zealand, as well as places such asNorway and Hawaii, as examples of people andplaces that have successfully saved theirIndigenous languages.

Quinn saidin Hawaii, students can now go fromgrade schoolup to a PhD in their ancestral mother tongue.

"You plunk people into a language and do what you did to learn the first language ...It's sort of just spending a lot of time learning the language, to speak it," said Quinn.

He said the best way to learn is to be surroundedwith the language, but when there aren't that many speakers, it's easier to just speak English.

Mother tongue

Quinn said he felt the hardest part for Indigenous speakers is that they naturally speakEnglish to those whodon't understand the language, rather than just sticking to their mother tongue.

That's something Andrea Bear Nicholas has also pointedto as a problem.

"We get it coming both ways. Our elders were once punished for speaking their language in residential schools and community reserve schools," said Nicholas, an emeritus professor at St. Thomas University.

"And our young people are ridiculed, in a sense, because they don't know their own language."

She feels the best way to save these languages is through total immersion programs, much like in thefrancophone school system.

"We're dealing with some old thinking," she said.

"We're still in the old frame of, 'It's just a little extra for our children to learn, its not something they really need to speak.'I think that's the attitude in general," said Nicholas.

Nicholas said shehas advocated for Indigenous immersion languages for years, and says the province could benefit from revitalizing the languages. In other places in the world, she said, when people know their mother tongue they tend to do better in school and end up in prison less often.

Heart and soul

"These languages are the heart and soul for our land and people and these languages are being systematically killed off," said Nicholas.

While there are core programs, she said they don't work because students only spend 40 minutes a day in their language and the rest of the school day isin English.

She says she hopes the Maliseet, Mi'kmaq and Passamaquoddy languages are saved one day, but the speakers of the languages are getting older.

It is estimated there are3,000 Maliseetliving in New Brunswick. Nicholas says only 300-400 still speak their language, but she hopesmore First Nations youth learn the language and are provided with a safe space to speak it.

Quinn agreed that new speakers to a language are often shy and uncomfortable. They tend to feel like they are under the spotlight and he hopes that immersion programs can instill a feeling of community.

"But if you have these techniques that worked for Maori, that worked for Hawaii and that have worked for the Mohawks, and put them in writing, that can maintain immersion. They just work."