Ts'msyen First Nation member aims to revitalize endangered Indigenous language through yoga

Emily Bryant grew up speaking Sm'algya̱x with her grandparents, though later conversed mostly in English with her parents and other relatives.

However, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Bryant — also known as Dm Syl Haaytk Gyibaaw, "the one who stands with the wolves" in Sm'algya̱x — says she has been spending more time with her 90-year-old grandmother, speaking her first language more frequently as a result.

"Immersing myself [in the language] for the last four years has opened up memories with my grandmother that's still here with me today," said Bryant, a member of the Ts'msyen First Nation.

Now Bryant, the language program co-ordinator of the nation's Kitsumkalum Band, is co-leading a unique new project in northwestern B.C., to help revitalize Sm'algya̱x: by incorporating words from the language to yoga.

Since mid-February, Bryant and her friend, yoga instructor Bhavani Britt McDougall, have been hosting a series of meditative yoga classes on Saturday evenings in Terrace, B.C.

Participants speak words in Sm'algya̱x with a spiritual theme, such as "heart," before the yoga routine. While the class is designed for Ts'msyen, Nisga'a and Gitxsan people, everyone is welcome to join.

Sm'algya̱x is a critically endangered language spoken by people across northwestern B.C. and Alaska. According to the First Peoples' Cultural Council, based in Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island, only 48 people worldwide speak it as their first language.

McDougall, who identifies as a settler of British and Jamaican ancestry, says she didn't know anything about Indigenous communities until after moving from Toronto to Terrace for high school in 2011.

She says she has since become passionate about Ts'msyen culture, and worked with the Kitsumkalum Band as a youth program worker from 2017 to 2021.

"[I have] gotten to know the community, and then noticing and falling in love and really just admiring the fire that's being lit among the people who reclaim the language," she said.

Bryant says the yoga classes inspire her to promote Sm'algya̱x to more people in the local community and to use the language more often in her daily life.

"Sm'algya̱x is what I dream of living one day without speaking English to other people," she said.

"To see my kids [speaking] Sm'algya̱x together one day without English is the goal."