About Canada-Aboriginal peoples

Monday, 06 February 2017

Cultural Necromania

The opening paragraph of one of Globe and Mail’s recent politically correct editorials titled “Not just words” reads:

“There are 60 indigenous languages in Canada, more or less; the most spoken are Inuktitut and the related Cree and Ojibway. But while there are many, they risk disappearing. What is needed is a national effort to preserve them…Senator Serge Joyal [a former Minister in a Liberal government) has been heroically [no less] trying….to help re-vitalize indigenous languages….More promising is Prime Minister [’s]…. vow to introduce a bill to re-energize indigenous languages...For many, the urgent interest in this issue is about preserving dying languages, which are understood mostly by elderly people.”.

When I read the editorial, I was reminded of the definition of history by a leading European scholar, whose name I do not remember and might have been Wilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist .He wrote: “History is a cemetery of civilizations.”

My question is aside from any academic interest of one or more professors seeking to make their names known as experts in something or another and the odd chance that the revival of a language might give us some clues of academic interest about the historical trajectory of the forebears of the people who spoke the language, what is the need for seeking to revive dying languages.

As a person who belongs to the ultimate or penultimate generation of Sephardic Jews (outside academia) who speak a fast dying language i.e. Ladino, spoken by my forebears who settled in the Ottoman Empire, among other places, upon their expulsion from Spain in 1492.

The last time I visited Turkey in May 2002 or 2003, I was amazed to hear people say that their sons and daughters, did not know, let alone speak the language .And this is the case for the Sephardim who immigrated to Israel or remained in the Diaspora.

In a real sense, this will be a loss because Jewish people belong to that part of the world that has a written tradition, and therefore with the effluxion of time, future generations will be unable to recover their past since they will be unable to read and understand the vast number of historical publications written in Ladino with the Latin alphabet or with the an odd Hebrew script and in some instances even with the Ottoman script.

At all events, neither Sephardic Jews, nor the Lebanese descendants of the Phoenicians or any other ethnic or national group in Canada whose forebears spoke and their elders speak a defunct or dying language are likely to successfully invoke Canadian multiculturalism to get government grants to revive their dead or dying languages.

Hence, what is the point of spending taxpayers’ money to revive dying aboriginal languages and dialects, particularly since the aboriginal peoples of Canada, do not have a written tradition?

The editorialist comes up with a number of justifications.

The first one is the standard one routinely invoked these days: “In an era of reconciliation with the indigenous peoples, putting money into the preservation of native languages would be a concrete gesture that could produce equally concrete benefits.” (Italics mine)  I personally cannot think of any benefit for the aboriginal peoples, except a symbolic one of sorts, in an age where the federal government and Parliament are busy dispensing symbolisms galore to atone for this and that. I suspect  the people on the reserves would much prefer to have the money spent on improving the quality of  education, social and health services; and the infra-structure on reserves; allocating larger sums for the post-secondary education of their and affording them new employment opportunities .

To date, with some possible exceptions, neither the aged folks speaking dying languages nor the residents of reserves not been shown a keen interest of their own to revive these languages. In the premises, the revival of dying or dead languages, save for some, is unlikely to make much difference in the reconciliation process.

At all events, in this day and age of emphasis on policy formulation based on research generated data, the speculative suggestion that the initiative would produce not just a benefit of sorts but concrete benefits is devoid of any evidence. It is just wishful thinking.

The second justification for financing the revival is based on paragraph 1 of Article 13 the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with respect to which on May 2016 the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs announced that ”Canada is now, a full supporter, without qualification, of the declaration.”

On the other hand, while the writer supports for the Declaration with the caveat “if adopted in a measured way”; never mind the era conciliation, Article 13 of the Declaration “can be a helpful guide”.

Article 13 reads: 

1. Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.

2. States shall take effective measures to ensure that this right is protected and also to ensure that indigenous peoples can understand and be understood in political, legal and administrative proceedings, where necessary through the provision of interpretation or by other appropriate means.

3. States shall take effective measures to ensure that this right is protected and also to ensure that indigenous peoples can understand and be understood in political, legal and administrative proceedings, where necessary through the provision of interpretation or by other appropriate means.

This is a bizarre argument. It is trite law that aboriginal peoples enjoy the right to do anything they wish save that which is forbidden by law. How this right would provide a helpful guide to anything related to the matter under consideration is a mystery.

Nor is paragraph 2 of the Article of any help, since the revival of the dying languages hardly need to be protected since the only persons involved in the revival are the aboriginal peoples themselves and it is most unlikely, let alone plausible, that anyone else is going to bother them for attempting to revive, their dying languages and speaking them. As to the provision in the second part of paragraph 2, I leave these for future discussion.

The third justification is that “the teaching of indigenous languages should be a priority on reserves, especially the most remote ones.” The first thing about this point is that it defies socio-cultural common sense. The reserves at risk of being culturally and linguistically overwhelmed are not those in remote places but those close to cities and major urban centres. The second thing is that the prescription is patronising. Surely, it is up to the inhabitants of the reserves to determine their priorities. In any event, nothing prevents these communities to arrange the teaching of dying languages as an extra-curricular activity, after the students meet the daily requirements of their regular curriculum. Whether these communities are going to find a willing audience among the young, is another matter.

The rationale offered for the priority is in the realm of purely speculative amateur armchair psychology: “Young people there may be most in need of tools to help overcome their alienation.”(Italics mine).Alienation from whom and from what? What is the causal connection between dying languages or their revival and the alienation of youth? How can the revival of a language cure or mitigate this sense of alienation?

The next and final justification is as speculative as the preceding one:”…there can also be excitement and value in learning a language and a culture that you don’t have any hereditary link to, something non-native Canadians might be interested in.” Well, in so far as learning an aboriginal language and culture is concerned, the writer obviously seems ignorant of the facts that non-natives have been studying, researching and publishing books and articles on aboriginal cultures for at least a century. The discipline is generically referred to as anthropology and the specialties with respect to languages and cultures are generally referred to as cultural anthropology, ethnology, ethno-history and ethno-linguistics, not to mention archaeology.

Further with respect to language, why bother learning a comatose language spoken mostly by elderly people, when one can learn a living one so that it can be used to extend the aboriginal interlocutors the courtesy of speaking with them in their own language instead of forcing them to speak in English?

The editorial concludes by referring to its speculative contents, of all things, as “principles”.

To be fair, one cannot reasonably expect an editorialist to address a subject of this scope in some detail within the ordinary space given to editorials, On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to expect her or him to provide at least one or two compelling clues, leads or arguments to point to the plausibility of the hypotheses and arguments set forth, or in the alternative to write either a full page editorial or a set of shorter ones.

In the premises, editorial amounts to, as its title says, just words.