[Member spoke in Mi'kmaq]
[English]
Thank you for joining us, Ronald. Congratulations on being the first-ever indigenous languages commissioner. As a fluent Mi'kmaq speaker, I'm very proud to see an indigenous language commission in place. You once told me something very powerful at an AFN language conference, and it has always stuck with me. You said, “Our indigenous languages are the bolt cutters on the chains of colonialism.” That stuck with me; I always remember that quote, and I've always shared that quote.
As Mi'kmaq people, we're very lucky to be advanced in our stages of promoting indigenous languages—we have Mi'kmaq immersion schools, Mi'kmaq apps, Mi'kmaq resources and songs in the Mi'kmaq language, new and old—but there are two things I'm concerned about. First of all is that we've put too much of a burden on the educators to save our languages. We're putting so much of a burden on the teachers to save the language, and sometimes we don't have the incentives required to make sure our youth want to speak the language in our future, not just for the culture but also because it's going to do something for them later on in life.
Can you speak to what some of the things are that we need to do to create incentives for our indigenous youth to continue speaking their language? What lessons can we learn from maybe the francophone community in terms of what they're doing right, to make sure there are reasons to speak the language moving forward?