In 1998, the Canadian government established the Aboriginal Languages Initiative (ALI) to fund projects aimed at preserving and protecting Aboriginal languages. Initial funding was CAD 5M per year. In Dec. 2002 the government announced funding of $175M for a proposed Aboriginal Languages and Cultures Centre (ALCC), which would replace the ALI. The Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures was also established, with a mandate “to make recommendations to the Minister of Canadian Heritage on the preservation, revitalization and promotion of Aboriginal … languages”. The Task Force submitted its recommendations in June 2005.
The election of Jan 23rd this year saw the rejection of the long-reigning left-of-centre but corrupt Liberals and the installation of a shiny new right-of-centre Conservative government.
On Nov. 3, the new government cut the remaining $160M of funding for the ALCC and reinstated the ALI for 8 years, with funding at the original level of $5M per year. The change has been condemned by various Aboriginal groups, including the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and the First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council of British Columbia. On Nov. 14, the Ontario-based Native radio station CKRZ aired a discussion of the situation with representatives of Aboriginal groups, including the Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine. The reinstatement of language funding was among the demands of a national protest in Ottawa on Dec. 5, sponsored by the Assembly of First Nations.
Letters of concern may be sent to The Honourable Beverley J. Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ont., Canada K1A 0A6 Oda.B@parl.gc.ca and to Ms. Judith A. LaRocque, Deputy Minister of Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Affairs, Les Terrasses de la Chaudière, Room 12A14 25 Eddy Street, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada K1A 0M5 Judith_A_LaRocque@pch.gc.ca
Follow
Here at Endangered Languages and Cultures, we fully welcome your opinion, questions and comments on any post, and all posts will have an active comments form. However if you have never commented before, your comment may take some time before it is approved. Subsequent comments from you should appear immediately.
We will not edit any comments unless asked to, or unless there have been html coding errors, broken links, or formatting errors. We still reserve the right to censor any comment that the administrators deem to be unnecessarily derogatory or offensive, libellous or unhelpful, and we have an active spam filter that may reject your comment if it contains too many links or otherwise fits the description of spam. If this happens erroneously, email the author of the post and let them know. And note that given the huge amount of spam that all WordPress blogs receive on a daily basis (hundreds) it is not possible to sift through them all and find the ham.
In addition to the above, we ask that you please observe the Gricean maxims:*Be relevant: That is, stay reasonably on topic.
*Be truthful: This goes without saying; don’t give us any nonsense.
*Be concise: Say as much as you need to without being unnecessarily long-winded.
*Be perspicuous: This last one needs no explanation.
We permit comments and trackbacks on our articles. Anyone may comment. Comments are subject to moderation, filtering, spell checking, editing, and removal without cause or justification.
All comments are reviewed by comment spamming software and by the site administrators and may be removed without cause at any time. All information provided is volunteered by you. Any website address provided in the URL will be linked to from your name, if you wish to include such information. We do not collect and save information provided when commenting such as email address and will not use this information except where indicated. This site and its representatives will not be held responsible for errors in any comment submissions.
Again, we repeat: We reserve all rights of refusal and deletion of any and all comments and trackbacks.