Revitalizing Indigenous languages is an important responsibility of everyone who settles here, says a scholar presenting at a Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) virtual event on May 10.
Dr. Lorna Wánosts'a7 Williams will speak at KPU’s next Indigenous Dialogue Series titled Nqwalútenlhkalha, Our Languages: Language Revitalization in the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
“Even though it’s a challenge for us to pick up the pieces – the shards that have become our languages, our knowledge systems – it’s our job to pick up those pieces and put them back together,” says Williams. “We have so much that we can learn, that we can share, that we can gift from the knowledge that is found in those languages.”
Williams is a professor emerita of Indigenous Education, Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria and Canada Research Chair in Education and Linguistics. She notes countless examples of how languages inform who Indigenous people are.
“Our word for family, snuk̓wnúk̓w7a, is also the same word we use for friends, it’s the same word we use for community and a gathering of people,” she says, also noting how most Indigenous languages have a single pronoun. “Although we really value maleness and femaleness, we don’t separate people. That really points to the world view of the people, and you can see that in language.”
As a child, Williams was sent to Indian Day School and then to residential school at St. Joseph’s Mission, where her Lil’wat language was lost. After returning home, Williams relearned her language with help from community elders. In turn, she became an English interpreter for the elders in her community.
Williams, who helped develop the Lil’wat writing system and teaching resources, will focus her KPU presentation on the great diversity of languages in B.C. and the work to revitalize these languages in a country that previously sought to silence them.
“I want people to see what the challenges are – what we’re having to rebuild – but I also want people to really have an appreciation that we haven’t stood by. We’ve kept our languages going, despite everything.”
The United Nations declared 2022-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, aiming to draw global attention to the critical situation of many Indigenous languages and to renew focus on the preservation, revitalization, and promotion of these languages.
“Language matters to indigenous people because our languages inform who we are and really contribute to our sense of identity. In rebuilding our communities, our families, our nations, and our relationship with the land, we need our languages to help us to do that,” says Williams. “We need everybody to participate in helping us to keep them alive.”
The Indigenous Dialogue Series event takes place via Zoom on Wednesday, May 10, from 12 to 1:30 p.m. Registration is free and open to the public, and is available through the KPU website.