Kids sang O Canada in Cree and “If you’re happy and you know it’ in Nakawe at City Park Collegiate as part of a festival educating kids on indigenous languages.
The festival on Monday couldn’t be more timely as Statistics Canada released census data recently that highlighted a decline in the number of people speaking indigenous languages across Canada.
“A lot of our young kids don’t know their language, so there is a generation losing their language,” said Laurie McAuley of the Saskatoon Tribal Council.
According to Statistics Canada, populations who designated Cree and Dene as their mother tongues remain stable.
Saskatchewan is home to the third-largest population of indigenous speakers and has the largest percentage of Cree and Dene speakers at 28 and 71 per cent, respectively. But the festival wasn’t just about language, McAuley said.
It was also aimed to educate kids about their culture.
“Aboriginal kids aren’t holding their heads high anymore, they need to know their culture and their languages,” she said.
If the kids attending tell their parents and talk about what they are learning in school, then interest in aboriginal cultures might catch on, McAuley said.
The festival is the first of its kind to be held in Saskatoon and was part of a three-way initiative among the public and Catholic school divisions and the Saskatoon Tribal Council.
“The festival is about recognizing that we need to do something about languages, not just talk about it,” said Jennifer Hingley of Saskatoon Public Schools.
It was attended by several hundred students from kindergarten to Grade 5.
After a short program to start the day, the kids split up and participated in workshops. Elders were on hand to tell stories and teach oral history, while volunteers and teachers taught the students how to dance at a powwow.
Hingley said there are several programs students can take back to their classrooms around Saskatoon. Confederation Park School and St. Francis School have successful Cree programs and some high schools offer Cree classes, but there are troubles with getting enough funding for Cree teachers.
A language festival will hopefully raise the profile of aboriginal languages and encourage students to enrol in the programs, she said.
While organizers don’t have any more events planned for the near future, they hope to have the festival yearly.
“It would be nice to have a language festival where everybody is just speaking and performing in their own language,” McAuley said.
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