Okay. Thank you very much.
Bill 101 and the Official Languages Act have affected us in the schools and have marginalized our indigenous, ancestral languages in our communities. The bill has to take into account the various levels of racism, societal indifference, racist attitudes and institutionalized racism from colonial laws, policies and programs that contribute to the opposite of enjoying our rights or participating in Canadian society.
Linguistic rights scholar Tove Skutnabb-Kangas coined the term “subtractive language education” in which she explains how it “subtracts from the child's linguistic repertoire, instead of adding to it”.
UNESCO has estimated that more than half of the world's 6,000 to 7,000 languages that are spoken today will become extinct by 2100. A great majority of these languages under threat are indigenous languages. Statistics can only describe the loss abstractly; the real loss is felt by indigenous peoples themselves.
I'm going to skip to funding now, for the sake of the translators.
We can no longer tolerate project funding. Imagine if your languages were at the sense of urgency that we feel today and that you had to do exhaustive reporting measures and write project proposals for your language when you have very limited human resources.
We have to provide for activities, but not for human resources. That's project funding. We have to provide for classes, but not for curriculum and development. That's project funding. While project funding has changed and while we do appreciate it, nevertheless the urgency consists of the challenges of continuity in indigenous languages revitalization remaining in project funding.
We emphasize the necessity for core, long-term, sustainable funding for experienced—I emphasize experienced—indigenous organizations that have led the way in indigenous languages preservation and revitalization, etc. Core funding must be provided for all levels of immersion classes.
I have a written presentation. I want to emphasize that onkwehón:we peoples have preserved their languages up to this point pretty much on their own. While the Constitution Act of 1982 is mentioned quite often, it has never been implemented. No province, nor even the federal government, has respected our inherent rights, and it's time to change that. If there's reconciliation, then reparation and restitution have to happen.
Our rights are consistently violated; they are not protected and they're not respected. Therefore, it is the duty of Canada and its provinces and territories to respect and not interfere any longer in our enjoyment of our rights. As the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights explains, all human rights are universal, interrelated, indivisible and interdependent, and the denial of one right affects the enjoyment of another.
Do I have any more time left?