Feds create Aboriginal languages centre

Copps earmarks
$172 million for project

BY LEN KRUZENGA

Winnipeg-A $172 million dollar project to establish an Aboriginal languages and cultural centre has been announced by the federal government.

Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps made the announcement in Winnipeg a week before Christmas, noting that the plan falls in line with the government's 2002 throne speech, in which it committed to a number of social and cultural improvements for Aboriginal peoples.

"Aboriginal languages and cultures are among the most endangered in the world, but the Government of Canada is committed to work with Aboriginal peoples to preserve and enhance them," said Copps. "The creation of such a centre will help strengthen Aboriginal communities by promoting a sense of pride and identity.

In fact, research on Aboriginal languages conducted over the last seven years indicates that half of the approximately 70 Aboriginal languages in the nation are on the verge of extinction and that at least 10 languages have disappeared entirely in the last century.

Studies of the situation continually stress that only three Aboriginal languages remain viable-Cree, Ojibway and Inuktitut.

The 1995 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples recommended the creation of a body to address the loss of Aboriginal languages and cultures primarily sustained by the suppression of language and identity through the government's residential school policy.

However the funding announcement by Copps is to come over an 11-year period.
Over the next two years the current Aboriginal Languages Initiative will receive extended funding to the tune of $5 million per year.

During that period, Copps says a task force, made up primarily of Aboriginal peoples, will be established to consult with First Nations peoples and prepare recommendations on the creation of the languages and cultures centre.

While the announcement has been generally well received by Aboriginal groups and educators, some have raised concerns that the government-while making a multi-million dollar announcement-is spreading it out thinly over an 11 or 12 year period.

"The largest part of the funding is actually contained in the funding the centre is to receive for ten years once it's established," said Anne Mason, a former primary school educator in northern Ontario. "Our communities and our children need this now and based on the government formula their really only committing less than $20 million dollars a year and that's only about $20 per Aboriginal man woman and child."