Study guide: Canadian Voices and Language Reconciliation

📋 Course Outline

1. Canadian Unity and Plurality
2. Highland Games and Canadian Society
3. Residential Schools and Reconciliation
4. Paragraph Writing and Comparison Grammar
5. FirstVoices and Language Revitalization
6. Language Gap and Community Learning
7. Language Revitalization Vocabulary
8. Indigenous Languages Act

📖 1. Canadian Unity and Plurality

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Great Gatsby Curve: Christopher Rauh, Voting, education, and the Great Gatsby Curve, 2016 - A positive relationship between cross-sectional income inequality and the persistence of income across generations, linking inequality with intergenerational income mobility.
• Intergenerational income mobility: The potential for citizens to achieve upward mobility whatever their parents’ social status.

📝 Essential Points

• Justin Trudeau's 2016 speech presents Canada as formed because of its differences, rather than in spite of them.

💡 Memory Hook

Differences are presented as a basis for unity, not an obstacle to it.

📖 2. Highland Games and Canadian Society

★ Must-know

• Season 17, episode 11 of Murdoch Mysteries is set during the Highland Games in Toronto.

• The Highland Games reflected the importation of British, particularly Scottish, traditions and culture into Canadian society through colonization.

Further detail

• Murdoch Mysteries is a one-hour drama series about detective William Murdoch, who pioneers forensic techniques to solve murders in Toronto.

• In the episode, a murder follows a dance competition, and Inspector Murdoch investigates Malcolm McDonald's death amid a long-standing feud between the Campbells and McDonalds.

• The Highland Games today reflect Canada's enduring connection to the Commonwealth.

📖 3. Residential Schools and Reconciliation

★ Must-know

• Residential schools forcibly sent Indigenous children away from their families, punished and shamed them, and forbade them from speaking their native languages.

• Some residential-school Survivors chose not to teach their children Indigenous languages to protect them from discrimination, creating a generational gap in language transmission.

Further detail

• Duncan Campbell Scott was Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932.

• The course identifies these themes for examining residential schools:

  • origins and purposes
  • abuse and conditions
  • intergenerational impact
  • resistance
  • accountability
  • healing

📖 4. Paragraph Writing and Comparison Grammar

★ Must-know

• The PEEL method develops a paragraph by stating a point, supporting it with evidence, explaining how the evidence supports the point, and linking back to the point or forward to the next paragraph.

Further detail

📌 The comparative structure “the more …, the more …” expresses a parallel relationship between two changing factors.

• The speaking task asks students to record an approximately 1-minute-30-second speech from the perspective of a First Nation group disagreeing with Justin Trudeau.

💡 Memory Hook

PEEL: Point, Evidence, Explanation, Link.

📖 5. FirstVoices and Language Revitalization

★ Must-know

• FirstVoices supports revitalization through:
  • Elder-youth collaboration
  • multimedia archives
  • accessible learning tools
  • technical support and training
  • Indigenous community control of language sites and materials

📌 Indigenous communities retain ownership and intellectual property rights over materials uploaded to their FirstVoices language sites.

Further detail

• Repositories can include: interactive dictionaries, alphabets, phrasebooks, traditional songs, cultural stories with audio, video, and images

• FirstVoices mobile dictionary apps are available for iOS and Android and can provide offline access to community language databases.

• FirstVoices learning and access tools include: custom keyboards, language games, a Kids Area, search tools designed for distinctive linguistic rules and minor typos

• Trish says the app is simple to use and has allowed her to express herself in her mother tongue, Kwak’Wala, and bring the language into multimedia.

• Trish says the app lets her use devices in her mother tongue, make lists, text people, and send tweets.

📖 6. Language Gap and Community Learning

★ Must-know

• British Columbia has 34 of Canada's nearly 60 Indigenous languages.

• Mentor-apprentice programs pair fluent Elders with adult learners, who learn through everyday immersive activities such as family chores or hunting expeditions conducted entirely in the Indigenous language.

• Researchers describe community-led language revitalization as both education and a practical form of reconciliation and healing from systemic trauma.

Further detail

• Sixty percent of fully fluent Indigenous-language speakers are aged 65 or older.

• One in three semi-fluent Indigenous-language speakers is under the age of 25.

• University of Victoria researchers Dr. Onowa McIvor and Peter Jacobs identify adult learners as a crucial link in Indigenous language revitalization.

• Graduates of immersion programs teach younger generations in tribal schools, and young people also volunteer to help teach Indigenous-language courses.

📖 7. Language Revitalization Vocabulary

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• To revitalize: To give new life, energy, or strength to something, such as bringing a language back into active use.
• Fluency: The ability to speak or write a language easily, smoothly, and accurately.
• To reclaim: To take back or recover something that was lost or taken away.
• Orthography: The conventional spelling system of a language.
• Proficient: Very skilled, competent, or good at doing something.
• Fluent: Someone who can speak or write a language easily, smoothly, and accurately.
• To customize: To modify or adapt something to suit a particular individual or task.
• Special characters: Symbols, accents, or letters not usually found on a standard keyboard layout.
• To assert: To state a fact or belief confidently and forcefully.
• hurdle: An obstacle or problem.
• To overcome: To succeed in dealing with a problem, difficulty, or obstacle.

📖 8. Indigenous Languages Act

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Indigenous Languages Act: A Canadian federal law supporting and funding Indigenous-led efforts to reclaim, revitalize, maintain, and strengthen Indigenous languages.

★ Must-know

• The Indigenous Languages Act received Royal Assent on June 21, 2019.

Further detail

• The Indigenous Languages Act recognizes that rights affirmed under Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 include rights related to Indigenous languages.

• The Act commits the federal government to adequate, sustainable, long-term funding for Indigenous language reclamation and revitalization.

• The Act established the independent Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages to promote languages, support community efforts, and review complaints or disputes.