Follow the Yellow--Red--Brick Road #6

Linguistic Development of a Heritage Language: Innu-aimun

Memorial's Department of Linguistics and Faculty of Education, working in partnership with Labrador Innu communities, are developing tools that will aid in the enhancement of literacy of the Innu in their own language, Innu-aimun.

The primary endeavour of the group will be to develop a comprehensive tri-lingual (Innu-aimun, English, French) dictionary. The research team, led by Dr. Marguerite MacKenzie, head of Memorial's Department of Linguistics, was awarded a Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) grant of $996,992 over five years from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for the project Knowledge and Human Resources for Innu Language Development.

[Note, in the face of a native area's incredible dysfunction:

"The primary endeavour of the group will be to develop a comprehensive tri-lingual (Innu-aimun, English, French) dictionary." ]

"With my co-investigators Barbara Burnaby, Faculty of Education, Philip Branigan, Linguistics, and Marie-Odile Junker, Carleton University, we will be developing tools for promoting literacy in the Innu language . . . . "The first year or two of the project will focus on building on the existing Montagnais-French dictionary compiled by Quebec linguist Lynn Drapeau, adding English translations and Labrador words, so that it can then form the basis of creating and revising literacy documents such as readers, classroom materials and other teaching aids using a common spelling system." . . . .

"We are also aiming to sensitize English and French speakers to the complexities of Innu-aimun. . . . ."


Another part of the project includes the creation of a Web site that will serve as an archive of information about the Innu language, including texts written in Innu, bibliographies, student theses and, eventually, the dictionary. [Check, but I believe this is for natives who had no WRITTEN language nor books. ]

The group will be partnering with the teacher training programs and other training programs in the community . . . .

"For aboriginal people in Labrador to take advantage of economic opportunities like Voisey's Bay they have to have a minimum level of ability to function in English." [The Innu French dictionary is being prepared first. See another article on FHTR on learning Inuktituk in Paris below.]...

Dr. MacKenzie and her team have been closely collaborating with the Sheshatshiu Innu Nation, the Innu Education Authority in Sheshatshiu and the Institut Culturel et Éucatif Montagnais in Quebec. "The research will be focused on establishing an ongoing relationship between organizations in the community and the university," explained Dr. MacKenzie.

"Groups such as Labrador Legal Services, the Newfoundland and Labrador Legal Aid Commission and the Sheshatshiu health and social services organizations on the one hand and faculty members from departments within Memorial on the other hand will establish teams to promote improved skills in Innu and English language in their specific domains. Thus, the results of research can be given back to the community so that members of the community can be trained to participate in research that is in their interest." [to alleviate the dysfunction? ]

"SSHRC's CURA program is designed to bring researchers and community groups together to work on issues of joint concern," said SSHRC President Marc Renaud.


Labrador school board, band councils, teachers, community leaders, federal Department of Native and Northern Affairs, and the Innu Nation. . . . creating and implementing a model to identify learner diversity, as well as creating avenues for long-term professional development to assist with capacity building . . . .

[. . . . ] There are endless research opportunities, and this could be the beginning of an interesting partnership . . . . sensitivity is required when dealing with preservation of language and culture.

More here



Note the following: Philpott Study: "plunged into an alien culture and language. . . . consultation with aboriginal educators and leaders to develop a culturally appropriate, language sensitive model . . . . at least 35 per cent of children . . . . fetal alcohol syndrome . . . . a dialogue among the stakeholders

Doesn't all that just warm the cockles of your heart -- to have contributed to such a development for the underachieving students--the glue-sniffing or otherwise addicted kids? Do you suppose they they might yet get to work at Voisey's Bay?

What is being done to address the alcoholism, the parental inability to parent because of addictions, children born with fetal alcohol syndrome, the drugs that have come into the North (besides the glue for sniffing and the alcohol) into Labrador?



Innu -- "They don’t want to see us get well. They make money from us.”

PARLIAMENT-HILL CHEAP February 09, 2005, John Lofranco

http://
www.maisonneuve.org/blog/
index.php?itemid=811

. . . hundreds of millions of tax dollars gone to waste. . . . the “healing strategy,” a government program to fix social problems in a Labrador Innu community. . . . move 700 Innu from Davis Inlet to the new, entirely government-built town of Natuashish, in an effort to stem rampant alcohol and drug abuse? Two years later, those problems still exist, and the massive government spending has produced few obvious results. Record keeping by the feds is so poor . . . not getting much of a return on the government’s investment: [. . . . ]

So where is the money going? The report noted that the band council was not immune to the community’s problems, showing evidence that Innu leaders were involved in the drug trade.

In whose interest would it be to appear to have a perhaps well-meaning group dialoguing with stakeholders, attempting to address a massive dysfunction with a a linguistic program, to be researching and preparing reports, dictionaries, curricula . . . sensitive . . . while in the background are those who would take advantage of dysfunctional peoples too addled and addicted to realize that they have just been given incredible powers over the resources in the lands they call home?

Oh, there was also a hurried land settlement by regulation--not via Parliament--involving the Minister, Andy Scott.

What do you think will happen? Who will benefit? Have you heard of immigration Minister Volpe's plans to bring in 40,000 immigrants? How many will be business immigrants with interest in oil and minerals?


I have mentioned plans on this site before. So many stakeholders to accommodate.

"The Canada of minorities is the Canada of tomorrow"

Our government, the helping professions and the long-term planners . . . working together . . . to improve lives . . . and the world . . .


FHTR June 29, 05

http://
frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2005_06_26_frosthitstherhubarb_archive.html

Captain's Quarters, April 10, 2005 -- a speech by Serge Joyal

Take a look at these excerpts from a speech made by Trudeau's last Secretary of State. The speech was made in French to The Acadian Association of Nova Scotia on November 13, 1982. (This Association is funded to the amount of half-a-million dollars per year by you the Canadian taxpayer.) A copy of the speech which, was not printed in any English newspaper, was sent to me by one of the few members of Canada's Parliament who had any inkling of what was happening in Canada, or cared. The relevant excerpt fom Mr. Joyal's speech are as follows: [. . . . ]

"The Canada of minorities is the Canada of tomorrow." [. . . . ]

Do not miss reading the rest.



FHTR week of June 26, 2005

http://
frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2005_06_26_frosthitstherhubarb_archive.html

The Canadian Geographic: Global Citizen edition, Nov./Dec. 2004
Education: Language of love
Why are there more students of Inuktitut in Paris than in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver? Ask their teacher, a feisty Quebecer

by Michel Arseneault, 132

[Michele] Therrien learned Inuktitut in an odd way. When she first went to northern Quebec in 1969, Quebec's Ministry of Education was setting up schools to counter federal English-only institutions. The new provincial schools were eager to teach Inuit children in their own language, but there were no Inuktitut-speaking teachers around. So the Ministry recruited francophones, including the young Therrien, who ended up in the little town of Salluit on the northern Ungava coast. She taught all her lessons in French, and an interpreter translated every word. "I'm not sure that my pupils learned very much," she confesses. "But by hearing my own words repeated over and over again, I ended up learning Inuktitut." [. . . . ]

French President Jacques Chirac was the first head of state to visit Nunavut, barely five months after it was created in April 1999. [. . . . ]

Search: Institut National des Langues et Civilisation Orientales



I await "Canada's African aid: PM & Team's humanitarian series" to get into full swing. . . . Perhaps it has already . . . Search: Africa Workshop -- or here

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