Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 26th, 2019

[Aluki Kotierk]

Absolutely.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

—shady spot.

[Aluki Kotierk]

It is absolutely necessary that Inuit languages are supported and funded in an equitable and comparable fashion in Inuit Nunangat, and particularly, as I advocate for Nunavut, that Inuit in Nunavut are able to have the dignity and get the services that they require and not rely on people who are bilingual in an informal way to ask us when they're in a situation and need us to informally provide interpretation services.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Hasn't there very recently been a death at sea that involved a misunderstanding between the Coast Guard and—

[Aluki Kotierk]

There are many examples. There are examples from the Coast Guard. There are examples of tuberculosis patients who have not received services and have died. People who are living say language was a factor in it.

There are many examples where we can point to Inuit not receiving the services that they should be able to receive because they are unable to understand clearly.

I could see all of you having difficulty and scrambling when I was speaking Inuktut, because the interpretation service wasn't that great, but I want you to know that every single day that is the reality of us as Inuit living in Canada as Canadians.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Yes. I understand.

You evoked three main points recognizing Inuktitut as an original language of Canada. The word “original” is very specific. You evoked the majority who speak the language. You talked about the service offering, which we just spoke about.

There's also a third point in your document that I'm trying to find here. A key term is “close collaboration”. I don't know what level that's at.

[Aluki Kotierk]

It's close collaboration with Inuit organizations. When I'm speaking about that, I'm thinking specifically in the context of Nunavut. Currently, there are language agreements that are agreed to by the territorial public government and the federal government, and Inuit organizations are not involved in that. Currently, there's one for French languages and one for Inuit languages. French languages get 40 times more than Inuit languages, per capita, when we're looking at it within Nunavut.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Per capita.

[Aluki Kotierk]

We see the inequity of that.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

We will now be going to Mr. Hogg for the final seven minutes.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you. I will be sharing a couple of minutes with Mr. Vandal.

Thank you very much for your passionate and informed comments.

Mr. Jones, you talked about looking at how the legislation should be broken down. First, though, I should make the same disclaimer that Mr. Nantel and others made. I'm not an expert in languages. As we proceed, it will become quickly apparent I'm not an expert in anything.

One of the issues in the development of legislation is how much is in the value statements, how much is specific, and how much you get to move around and be flexible with. Some people are arguing that it's a very positive thing. Some people are saying that it's a negative. Some people want to have a much more concrete sense in it. When you developed the 12 principles you talked about, how did you incorporate that or triage that into a system that said this is what should be contained in the legislation and this is what should be contained in policy or regulations or something? Can you tell me a little bit about how your principles reflected that?

[Roger Jones]

I can only speak to the AFN's experience on this. We were instructed to seek inclusion in the legislation—these essential 11 principles that I know were shared with you last week by the national chief—so the objective for us was to try to get them into the main body. Often the response was, well, we could put that in the preamble. But our preference was to try to get it into the main body, because that's where people wanted to see it. In the course of our engagements, people did understand the difference between putting words in the preamble versus the body versus regulations. All of our efforts were directed at trying to get as many of our principles as we could within the body.

At the same time, though, people did say that less is better in terms of the length of the bill. For instance, if you look at this bill, clauses 31 to 42 talk about the financial management of the indigenous languages commissioner. That's not anything that people generally concern themselves about, yet it's five pages in the bill. We encouraged maybe putting that in regulations or in a schedule or in an annex or something. It's a distraction for people, quite frankly, because all of a sudden people think it is about the indigenous languages commissioner rather than about what their priorities are.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Some of the witnesses before us here have said that when you put it in legislation, it's concretized, and things change so quickly, you might not want to lose that flexibility. I guess that's what you're suggesting with respect to that.

Another issue that the witnesses have had varying points of view on is about the office of the commissioner and directors. How should they be appointed? Some witnesses have argued that they should be appointed geographically as opposed to being representative, i.e., Inuit, Métis, first nations. Should they be broken down in that fashion or geographically? Do you have a position with respect to that, or is that something you have explored?

[Roger Jones]

Well, part of the discussion relating to the commissioner's office was mostly with respect to the mandate. What's its purpose? How do you ensure that the purpose of the office is actually going to be realized? At times we talked about business lines as being important in ensuring that the office was going to be effective. In terms of mandate, you could say that the office's most important job, first of all, is oversight, making sure that the government is living up to the intentions of the bill.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I agree with that part.

[Roger Jones]

That's an important business line. Then you get into the area of promotion. Then you get into the area of complaints investigation. Some of that, I believe, is reflected in the potential organization, but that's not the be-all and end-all at this point. It says “up to”.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

Aluki, you made the comment that the appointee in the commissioner's office just didn't mean anything except for just being appointed. How would you see the operations of this rolling out? How would you separate that? You talked a bit about perhaps having your own legislation. Is that the only way that it would work, or is there some way to ensure that the commissioner's office did carry out the tasks? If they were not made explicit, if they were left, as Mr. Jones suggested, or Mr. Benjamin, who talked about values only, how would you see that operating? Would that function in a way that made sense to you?

[Aluki Kotierk]

I've looked through the legislation. My fear about the creation of a commissioner's office is that it's symbolic. It does not help a 10-year-old Inuktitut-speaking student when they go into the school. I don't know how it's going to transform the way in which the federal government is protecting and ensuring indigenous languages thrive. It seems like a bureaucratic process that is a way for the federal government to pat itself on the back and say, “We are actually doing something for indigenous languages.”

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

How would you put that in there? Would you have measurables? “The federal government must do this”, is that the phrasing you would use?

[Aluki Kotierk]

I think it's important that there be objective standards against which indigenous languages can be measured. In terms of Nunavut and Inuit languages, when I talk about the standards of services and the essential services in which I think Inuktut and Inuit should be receiving services, that's where I expect the commissioner's office would be helpful, in that area. But in terms of providing reports to the Government of Canada and saying, “This is how we spent money on activities”, I don't think that's a useful exercise.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

Apparently, my time has run out. Sorry, Dan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

That is all our time for this first panel. I want to thank all of you for providing us with your testimony and for your assistance. We are going to be suspending briefly while we set up the next panel. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

We are starting again. I would like to give a quick shout-out before we get started. There were a whole bunch of students in the room.

Hello. It's great to see all of you here. They're at Algonquin College, part of Nunavut Sivuniksavut, I believe, which is the future of Nunavut. Thank you for coming.

We are now on our second panel. We have Karon Shmon from the Gabriel Dumont Institute and we have Jocelyn Formsma and Christopher Sheppard from the National Association of Friendship Centres.

We will begin with Karon Shmon.

[Karon Shmon, Director of Publishing, Culture and Heritage, Gabriel Dumont Institute]

Good afternoon. I'd like to acknowledge that we're meeting on unceded Algonquin territory, and I want to thank the committee for allowing me this opportunity to speak with you today.

I'm probably going to be a lot different from what I just heard in the last panel. I think it was a good opportunity for me to hear what was said.

I'll give you some background on the Gabriel Dumont Institute. We are a Métis post-secondary and cultural organization. We're based in Saskatchewan and we are considered to be the cultural and education arm of the Métis Nation—Saskatchewan.

In 1976, our elders were at a cultural conference and they decided that the only way our culture, history and language were going to be preserved and then told from our own perspective was if we formed an institute of our own. By 1980, the Gabriel Dumont Institute was founded based on that recommendation from the elders and the others at the cultural conference.

In 2020, we will celebrate our 40th year. On the education and training side, it's the design and development and delivery of educational programs for Métis. This was, I think, the beginning of what we would call our Métis affirmative action program. We're not asking anyone to lower the bar. We're asking to get our people to the bar so that they can be employed and contribute as others have and do.

The flagship program for that was Métis teacher education. Over those 40 years, we've graduated over 400 Métis teachers, and they're making a huge difference in the education system. They're almost all based in provincial schools. Initially, it was to show Métis children that they could become teachers if they wanted to, but it has gone beyond that to show the capability of Métis people as educational leaders and to ensure that Métis content, perspectives and ways of knowing are a part of the curricula. They are mandated to be part of the curricula but how they are delivered and whether they are delivered is spotty. That's that story.

Then on the culture and history arm, we have the world's largest repository of Métis-specific items in the Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture. It is accessed about 40,000 times a month by places all over the world. That's unique visits, not repeat visits. We're generating interest not just in Saskatchewan but across Canada as well.

Regarding our language, it's an inextricable part of our culture and heritage and yet it's in peril right now. The Métis nation is original to Canada. There's no other place that it was formed first, and that also goes for our language, Michif, which predates Confederation. As you're probably well aware, we called ourselves the new nation, and we had quite a huge role in the fur trade. We were the middlemen—and, I always like to add, the middle women—of the fur trade because those alliances were good business practice. But they were also the birth of the Métis nation, because our people could both liaise and make familial connections with both first nations and the Europeans who were doing business at the time.

Then as time went on, we morphed into our own culture and developed our own language. That's Michif and it's unique. It hadn't existed previously. Some of the technologies and ways of doing things were unique to the Métis as well.

We consider people like Louis Riel to be nation builders, because he was very instrumental in making Canada. Then of course after the first resistance in 1869-1870 and then the big one in 1885, Métis lost that battle but we won the rights battle. Métis went into hiding because it was very dangerous to identify as a Métis person after that. You were pretty much guaranteeing that you would be unemployed and perhaps further persecuted for being Métis.

We were not recognized by the government in any way. Our people were forced to disperse, because again, for the second time, we were kicked off our lands and told to go elsewhere. Then I think most of you would be familiar with the big rip-off of the scrip process. That was a process for getting compensation for leaving those lands, but there were so many speculators around at the time who took advantage of that that the Métis people didn't get the land or compensation and were dispersed.

I consider that one of the reasons our language, Michif, is in such peril at this time.

It is an awful tragedy that first nations were relegated to less than 1% of the land base of Canada and needed a pass to leave, but I do envy the fact that they were congregated into a spot where their language could remain intact until more recently. Their languages were used in the community and passed from generation to generation.

As the Métis dispersed, not only were people spread out and not able to stay in those strong family groupings, but it was something that you hid. There are oral stories of our people hiding bannock and of not speaking the language when others were present, so we also got the messaging in mainstream schooling that our language and culture were of no importance, and again, we were being taught from the historical perspectives of non-indigenous authors. We'd have to hear about the crazy rebel Louis Riel, how he rebelled against the Government of Canada and how the founding fathers were the great heroes of Canada.

Those were hard messages to choke down at the time, and then a pan-indigenous approach to who the indigenous peoples of Canada are. I'm not a fan of that term. I consider it a lazy throwback to the term “native” or even “aboriginal” in that it's not distinctions-based. If the average person, the average Canadian, were surveyed, if you asked them what “indigenous” means, they would say “first nations”. We get memos with such things on them as “indigenous and Métis”. We are indigenous people.

We finally were recognized, but we're way behind. After the efforts of Métis Harry Daniels, who took the Canadian government to court, we were recognized in the Constitution Act of 1982, under section 35, so it has not even been 40 years since we've had any formal recognition.

More recently, in 2016, the Daniels decision was another victory, initiated by Harry Daniels, in which the federal government agreed that they should have taken responsibility for the Métis as they did for the Inuit and the first nations.

Therefore, in terms of those issues, of us having to go underground, of being dispersed and of having mainstream schooling not affirm who we are as an indigenous people and then of no value for us to keep our languages.... I never say we “lost” them; I say they were “taken”, because of those factors.

The recent exhibition by Library and Archives Canada that calls the Métis “Hiding in Plain Sight” is fairly accurately titled, because we have been there all along. It's just that we haven't been recognized as being there, so we're hoping to change all of that.

Michif is “critically endangered”, and that's not my term. That's a United Nations term. There's a matrix they use to identify what kind of danger a language is in, and that is the worst place for it to be. “Extinct” is zero speakers, but when you have only the grandparent generation speaking the language and their children and grandchildren do not speak the language, that's a critical factor.

They are dispersed, so they're not even living with people or within a community where they can practise the language, so that is another factor.