Good evening.
[Witness spoke in Mi'kmaq]
I am Blaire Gould, and I come from the Mi'kmaw territory, specifically the Eskasoni First Nation. I am a first-language speaker, born and raised in a language-rich community of Eskasoni First Nation. I represent a generation in my community where speaking Mi'kmaw was normal. Additionally, I have four beautiful children, who are also raised in the language, but in their generations, speaking Mi'kmaw is not what it was in my generation, and actually only a handful of children from each of their generations are speakers.
I represent Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey. This is a team of unified chiefs, staff, parents and educators who advocate on behalf of and represent the educational interests of our communities, and we protect the educational and Mi'kmaw language rights of the Mi'kmaw people, as legislated in 1998 under the Mi'kmaq Education Act. The importance of revitalizing and reclaiming our languages is essential to who we are as indigenous people. There have been deliberate ways to remove our languages from us, as people, which includes our identities, our cultures and our well-being.
In every location across this land, we visit the respective territories of the original people, whose land we are on, and know the richness and diversity of their languages, traditions and cultures. Today, I sit here on Algonquin territory and acknowledge the Algonquin people, as a visitor and ally with great respect from Mi'ikma'ki.
In my territory, there are great efforts to revitalize and reclaim languages. Languages have been a high priority within our leadership and our Sante' Mawio'mi, which is the traditional government of the Mi'kmaw people. In the last 13 years, Nova Scotia's language-speaking population has significantly declined. In 1999, the generation of 10- to 19-year-olds was 70%, while 13 years later, the same generation was assessed at 20%. To see a decline in our speaking populations within the younger generations is alarming.
There have been measures to reverse those declines, but with no adequate or sustained funding, it is very hard to do. The effort to establish languages back to normalization, as they were once spoken in all domains, is essential to the foundations of this bill. For normalization, we must embrace the evolution of our languages to move forward. I see clear efforts to respect the rights of self-determination and see this moving a step forward in reconciliation.
I would like to highlight clause 24 of the bill, and more specifically intellectual property. There's one amendment I'd like to see, that intellectual property rests with the nations and not individuals or institutions.
I see this bill as a foundational bill, and I respect the people who have spoken before me on those recommendations for amendments. I have been fully briefed on those conversations here today, but I am just here to reiterate the intellectual property clause.
Wela'lin.