Language Education and Canada’s Indigenous Peoples

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the language situation of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and their educational struggles. The authors situate policies, programs and pedagogical strategies in the complex historical and socio-political Canadian context. After an outline of the historical and socio-political context for the language education of Indigenous peoples in Canada, contemporary Indigenous policies, programs and pedagogical strategies around language education are presented, in the aftermath of the Indigenous struggle for self-determination and increasing mainstream awareness of Indigenous language and education issues. A surge in Indigenous population growth resulting in an increasingly youthful population profile, a pull towards urbanization, and the rise of new technologies are all factors that are affecting the landscape of language and education in Indigenous (or Aboriginal) Canada. Drawing on data from a language maintenance project in a Quebec Innu community and a language revitalization project in a Mi’gmaq community in the Maritimes, the gamut of Indigenous responses to the challenge of not one but two colonizing languages is demonstrated. These initiatives are placed in the wider Canadian context.