Sask. to offer Nakoda language courses to high school students

Nakoda language courses will be offered to high school students in Saskatchewan starting in the fall.

The province announced earlier this week the courses will be available at the 10, 20 and 30 levels, and will be offered in addition to classes in four other Indigenous languages currently offered: Cree (nēhiyawēwin), Nakawe, Dene and Michif.

It said the curriculum was developed by Carry the Kettle Nakoda Nation, also known as Cegakin Nakoda Nation, and was previously offered as a locally developed course. It was created with linguistic experts and knowledge keepers working together in the community, and the First Nation asked that it be offered provincially.

Nakoda is the traditional language of the Nakoda people, who are represented across Saskatchewan in the Carry the Kettle, Ocean Man, Pheasant Rump, White Bear and the Mosquito, Grizzly Bear's Head, Lean Man First Nations.

Vincent Collette is a researcher of the Nakoda language in Regina. He has worked closely with Carry the Kettle First Nation to write a textbook and a dictionary to preserve the dying language.

He also taught Nakoda at the First Nations University of Canada for four years.

"When I was called to work on Nakoda there was already a momentum going on," he said. "Mostly younger people, they were struggling to find a platform or something to get the ball rolling."

He said the community has lost most of the fluent speaking elders and there are almost no fluent speakers left. He said preserving their traditional language means a lot to the Nakoda people.

"The Nakoda language is kind of the backbone of their culture.… With all of the atrocities that happened with residential school and the loss of language, it really means everything to gain language back," he said.

"There are some things that simply cannot be expressed in English."

'The core of who we are as a people'

Chad O'Watch has been a teacher at the Cegakin Nakoda Nation's Nakoda Oyade Education Centre high school for nine years. He said when he graduated from the school in 2006, he was not given the opportunity to take his traditional language in school.

"I knew a long time ago that this is some work that had to be done," he said. "It was always a goal of a lot of our language speakers and our leaders to have our Nakoda language offered from … [kindergarten] all the way to [Grade] 12."

O'Watch said residential schools are a big reason as to why the language is dying.

"Unfortunately, we're left to kind of pick up the pieces and gather the pieces that we're able to," he said.

O'Watch said thanks to researchers and linguists, such as Collette, the community has records and recordings of elders to help with preservation of the language.

"The core of who we are as a people and our traditions all are rooted in our language," he said.

He said kids in the community are searching for their culture and when given the opportunity to learn more about it, they often have a desire to learn more.

"They're hungry for all of those things that make up who they are as Nakoda, and they're realizing that a lot of the issues that we deal with as First Nations people can be helped through the acquisition of language," he said.

The provincial government said in a statement that the new curriculum aligns with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's Calls to Action, which identify the importance of Indigenous languages.

O'Watch said while this is a step in the right direction toward reconciliation, he expects issues to come up around not having enough teachers in the province to properly teach the subject.

Training may be needed at the university level, "or some type of mentorship that's going to need to take place," he said.

"The best reconciliation that can happen is for our people to regain what they've lost through that cycle of residential school."