It's a really important question.
In working at the cultural centre, what was developed in collaboration with the education centre here is we recruited seven youth to learn the language full-time—four days a week, mind you. We would have liked to have more. What we're doing is providing funding as payment. They're getting paid to learn our language because that's what needs to be done.
Our languages face a challenge because of Canada's linguistic duality and recognition of French and English. It's the only way we're going to see recruitment of new speakers. It's not enough to learn your numbers or your colours. It's a very complex and rich form of expression. Because it's been devastated so much by Indian residential schools and the mentality that has followed Indian residential schools as part of their impact, we need to provide those opportunities. Those opportunities are for people to learn full-time, like a job, five days a week, and to have those opportunities for the children to be able to have a curriculum in their languages.
I want to talk about funding. Funding should go directly to the cultural centres. It should go directly to language revitalization. It should not go to a middleman—and with all due respect to Chief Bellegarde—not to a national aboriginal organization to give the funding out. Our languages need that help.
The other part of funding is the exhaustive requirements for reporting, whether it's financial, whether it's for activities. We have been going on the basis of the needs of the government and what's the theme of the year. Government needs to let us decide what our needs are, how we're going to approach this. We're always trying to tick the box that the government creates. In order to get rid of that shame that you were talking about, we need to elevate the language as an important part of our identity. We need the recruitment of new speakers.
In my community we speak the oldest dialect of Kanienkeha. Kanienkeha is the language. Kanienkehaka are “the people of the flint”. Most of our speakers are 60 and over. Those are the first language speakers, which means the children are not speaking the language. Unless the children see that it's important or the youth see that it's important, it's just going to remain something as an activity for bingo, or to learn the colours, or to learn what an animal is. Any changes in language revitalization must be based on the needs, and on the front line must be those elders, those fluent speakers.
Let's forget about administrative costs, and let's get the work done, because we don't have the time anymore.
Thank you for your question.