Greetings. Ublaami. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
As the chair has mentioned, my name is Duane Ningagsiq Smith, and I am the chair and CEO of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. It's in the very far northwest portion of Canada but still in the country. I represent almost one million square kilometres of Canada within my region.
My Inuvialuit name was given to me by my grandparents. It's a custom process in our system.
In regard to the language issues, when you understand it so well that it is in your heart and your mind, it is not only a means to convey information and obtain things; it is a source of strength, pride and belonging. It is the caretaker of our history and our culture.
I do want to say thank you for this opportunity as well. It's taken us 151 years for me to sit down here in front of you, and I hope we can develop that much more quickly in regard to reconciliation.
I wish I could share more of my language with you. I wish I could help my extraordinary heritage become our extraordinary heritage as Canadians. When I say that I wish that I could, I am the third generation of assimilation within this country, where we were not allowed to speak our language. If we did try to, then we were either beaten, etc., or put into certain conditions where we would learn not to speak our language. I am the third generation of that. I grew up in the wake of Canada's mission to make us all the same, and I have lost something fundamental because of those policies and the laws that entrenched them.
I'll now give you a quick description of our region and the state of our language. In the Inuvialuit settlement region, ISR, the Inuvialuit are the Inuit of the western Arctic. It's nine hours by jet, but like I said, it's still in the same country. I welcome you to come to visit us sometime.
The ISR is one of the four regions of Inuit Nunangat, our homeland. There are six communities located in the ISR, and we have over 6,000 Inuvialuit registered and enrolled with us.
In response to Canada's accelerating development agenda and assimilation policies in the Arctic, the Inuvialuit negotiated the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, which was signed and brought into effect in 1984. One of the three principal objectives of both Canada and the Inuvialuit under the IFA is to preserve Inuvialuit cultural identity and values within a changing northern society. When I say “both”, we're both signatories to this treaty, so we're both obligated to make sure it's implemented to the greatest extent that we can together.
Regarding the state of our language, later today you will hear the president of ITK, Natan Obed, talk about Inuktut, which is the language of Inuit Nunangat. For clarity, Inuvialuktun is the name we give to Inuktut in our region. We have three dialects within the Inuvialuktun: Sallirmiutun, Uummarmiutun and Kangiryuarmiutun The speakers of Inuvialuktun are able to converse with Inuktut speakers right across Inuit Nunangat as well as into Alaska and Greenland. We have been tied together by our language and culture for millennia.
A long period of contact along with Canada's past assimilation policies and inequitable funding for language have extensively corroded the vitality of Inuktut in the western Arctic. Compared to the high percentage of individuals able to speak Inuktut in Nunavik and Nunavut, only 22% of Inuvialuit have conversational ability in our language. We still have a small window of opportunity to see Inuktut preserved where it continues to thrive and to see it rehabilitated in our region.
I will now turn to the bill.
In terms of comments on Bill C-91, my fellow Inuit presenters will discuss the process in which we were engaged on this bill as well as the draft text that our working group has proposed in support of this process. I will not repeat these comments due to the time constraints. My intention today is to identify those aspects of Bill C-91 that are of particular importance for our regions where the vitality of Inuktut is more severely diminished.
Bill C-91 is a positive start. The bill includes Canada's acknowledgement that the rights of indigenous peoples recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, include rights related to indigenous languages. This is absolutely correct and reflective of Canada's existing obligations under the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. Bill C-91 sets as a main purpose to support the efforts of indigenous peoples to reclaim, revitalize, maintain and strengthen indigenous languages. Related to this, the bill sets out the purpose of the act to establish measures to facilitate the provision of adequate, sustainable and long-term funding for the reclamation, revitalization, maintenance and strengthening of indigenous languages. These measures are absolutely necessary.
It is our view, however, that to achieve these purposes for Inuvialuit we will need to continue working together to refine the legislation.
First, it will be necessary to acknowledge that Inuit Nunangat is a distinct linguistic region within existing laws that recognize Inuktut as an official language. This would allow for sophisticated measures that have a real chance of success to be implemented.
Second, it will be necessary to re-evaluate the creation of the office of the commissioner of indigenous languages and its role in jurisdictions like the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, which already have a similar office.
Third, it will be necessary to impose a requirement to enter into bilateral agreements with our organizations to further the purposes of the act rather than leaving this as a mere option. As we have observed over the last few decades in my territory, funding that has flowed through the territorial government is not distributed in an equitable or even a logical fashion. It tends to go where the voting populations are greater and where the chance of success is weak.
Due to the time lag, I'll stop my comments and I will entertain your questions as we proceed.
With that, quyanainni, quyanuq.
Thank you for your attention.
I'll be happy to take questions.