[Witness spoke in Cree, interpreted as follows:]
I want to greet you all. I want to talk to the Creator. First and foremost, I have to thank the Creator for giving us this day.
The reason I am here today is to talk about the graduation rates of our first nation students, our youth and the ones who are going to universities and colleges. I really want to thank the standing committee for inviting me again, and I really would like to thank you for allowing me to speak in my own language.
If we are to talk about our own children, language should be at the forefront of teaching. My own reserve is Ministikwan. When we teach our children we always take our students, our elders and our parents who are involved in our Cree immersion school programming.... It is up to the elders. They are wanting us to take all our kids to the land...to know where they come from and to try to retain the language, bring back the language, in my own reserve in Ministikwan.
In 1976, and in the early 1980s, when we first opened our school, a brand new school, it went up to grade 9, and then up to grade 12. When our students came there, English was taught in that school. The Cree language wasn't even taught. Then our elders came and assessed it. This is when our elders were crying out that there was no Cree language taught.
At one time when we were teaching the Cree language to kids in our school, lots of parents who came to assist our school programming were able to read and write in our own language. We piloted this program from Onion Lake Cree immersion school. How was it that these kids were able to read and write and do the numbers in their Cree language?
I really want to talk about where we went for our Cree language teaching training. We went to the University of Alberta. That is where we all went to learn how to teach Cree. In that school, they were telling us that it is better to teach these kids in their Cree language. These kids are most likely to be very successful in finishing high school. They have to be taught in Cree and in English. When we first started in nursery school, kindergarten, and up to grade 2, by the time we got to grade 3, we saw the progress, how these kids were learning their English and Cree language at the same time. They were very successful. They were able to retain their language.
We really need to keep our language alive in our own schools and in our community, and where we come from in Ministikwan. We are very fortunate in our own reserve. We still have lots of elders who are urging us to teach and retain our language right in the classroom. We are starting to see the language loss in our schools today.
When the epidemic came, there were a lot of social problems and family violence that came. The reserve was very very [Inaudible—Editor]. There were a lot of social problems. With that poverty comes family violence, but then the elders are urging us just to keep teaching our languages. We are also wanting to teach our own children. They will be very successful.
In terms of kinship, we need to bring back the language. There, we talk about relationships. We talk about kinship. This is our very strong relationship with the land.