The First Peoples’ Cultural Council, a first nations-run Crown corporation based on Vancouver Island, has been chosen to oversee a project developed by Google that seeks to preserve endangered indigenous languages.
The Google Endangered Languages Project, launched June 21 to coincide with National Aboriginal Day, invites language experts from around the world to post videos, audio clips, books and other publications on its website to catalogue languages that are in danger of becoming extinct.
British Columbia is home to the majority (60 percent) of First Nations languages in Canada, and also has the highest number of endangered languages in the country.
Worldwide, experts estimate that 50 percent of the 6,000 languages spoken today will be extinct by the year 2100 unless something is done to preserve them.
‘Oppression and Injustice’
According to EndangeredLanguages.com, languages often fall into decline as a result of “oppression and injustice.”
First Nations languages in Canada began to deteriorate after European colonization. Subsequent government assimilation policies and residential schools caused a devastating interruption to intergenerational language transmission, according to FPCC’s report.
“First Nations people who had been raised at home in their First Nations languages as children, were trained, forced, and shamed into abandoning their languages at residential schools,” reads the report.
“Even when they were released from the schools, many could not go back to speaking their languages or pass the languages on to their children because of residual shame and trauma.”
The report also notes that the loss of language equals the loss of “whole cultures and knowledge systems,” which would include spirituality, philosophy, human values, oral and musical traditions, scientific and environmental expertise, medical knowledge, social and community relations, and cultural or artistic skills and traditions.
Preserving Cultural Heritage
