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By CHRISTIANA WIENS IMAGNE the Kitsumkalum Villagein the year 2005 as a tourisa destination point. Visulize a place where peoplifrom across B.C, will cometo visit ‘‘one of the riches, cultural areas of

B.C."and you have tapped into ne of Diane Collins’ Plansior the future.

- The newly-appainted 39- yeardld Kitsumkalum chief has: ig ‘plans for her tiny | comunity, which repréents: one of the casteh-most settlements of the Simshian people,

‘S8 wants to change the wavhings are done.

‘Ve ‘need more com- muity consultation,” said the;village’s first feniale

: chif. “Pm getting to know

_- wht people want.”

“Fer open-door policy en-

, corages discussion. The conmunity’s first quarterly meting was held Sunday, Mr. 21 with one specific gal in mind — to rintroduce the band council village residents and get fople talking.

‘Wout 200 people live in

5 homes in the village it- -Sl£ Collins says another

0 of the Kitsumkalum

ople live away from the village and can be harder to reach.

She hopes that together, al her people will find solu- tims to the band’s 60 per

_ cent unemployment rate.

'T want fo look inward at my people,’ she said. ‘‘I want-to ask how can we be stronger, how can we be moreunited??’

Hef tourism idea would creat jobs, improve com- mutity pride and make this corter of the northwest a culitral mecca,

‘Sle hopes to work with Terace city council and the Niga’a to make the area a place where tourists come to se: Tsimshian events. , .... ...

oie of the biggest draws tere,” she said. ‘'The op- jortunities are fantastic, ’’

But first, she said, the community will need to de- cide if and how they want

_ By CHRISTIANA WIENS ONE OF THE ways to keep a culture alive is to restore the language of its people,

Realizing this, the federal ‘department of Canadian ‘Heritage set aside $20 mil- lion in 1998,

The program, called the ‘Aboriginal Languages In- ‘itiative, gives money to In- uil, First Nations and Metis groups thal need help im- proving their culture’s Jan- guage skills.

‘The Tsimshian people who live north and south of Prince Rupert and east along the Skeena River toward Terrace did not qualify for critically endangered lan- guage status.

According to the Assemb- ly of First Nations (AFN) and regional bodies which ‘control the money, 60 per cent of the Tsimshian under- stand their language.

Diane Collins, the newly- appointed chief of the Kit- sumkalum village near Ter- race says that’s wrong.

- “Maybe we can use (he 60 per cent as a goal,’’ she

minute of it,

lture, tourism keys to

future says chief

et

DIANE COLLINS, Kitsumkatum's first female chief, stands outside the House

‘

3 : of Sim-oi-Ghets on West Kalum

Road. The colourful gift shop is a Kitsumkalum landmark clearly visible from Hwy 16. Collins hopes the shop will attract tourists to the village and create much-needed jobs.

that to happen.

She’s also working on the details of a new aboriginal fishing strategy contract” with council and witnessing the passing of provincial programs such as child wel- * fare and health into the hands of village leaders,

The challenge is to bring daily social issues to the at- tention of treaty negotiators and summit leaders.

It’s a process she terms, “awakening the summit.”

While the new jab could seem complicated and over- whelming to some, Collins says she’s enjoying every

/ t's time to make.culture. She also, has , excellent

staff and effective-council to inform her on decisions. “'Wher I have the strength of my people behind me,” she said, “I can fight any batile,”’

said, “‘But it’s a lot lower than that.”

Collins said the language is most fuently spoken by Village elders who represent only six to 10 per cent of the Tsimshian population.

So the village joined its coastal neighbours in a lan- guage survey to count the number of Kitsumkalum people who don’t speak Tsimshian.

Assembly staff in Ontario agree that the statistics used to delegate the money are incomplete.

‘We could have used bet- ter statistics,’ said Vanessa Stevens, ‘But there was a lack of time and we needed to get something done.”’

But, she said, there isn’t enough money for everyone.

“There isn’t a lot of Money to go around,’’ said program otganizer Louise Lahache.

Of the $20 million set aside for Aboriginal Lan- guage Initiatives, the AFN gets $19.5 million over four years. Canadian Heritage keeps $.5 million for admin-

MICHAEL BARTLET runs the cash register at the Tempo gas bar at the Kitsum-

kalum village. The bar opened early last year and offers full-time employment to a number of Kisumkalum residents,

Keeping the language alive

istrative costs.

Inuit and Metis languages then get 25 per cent of that $19.5 million.

That leaves almost $15 million for all the other aboriginal languages in Canada, Stevens said.

“It’s not a lot when you break it down,”’ she added.

To ensure the most endangered languages, with 1,500 speakers or fess pet moncy, the AFN scts aside $4.4 million.

Stevens said endangered languages were determined according to a 1990 federal study on aboriginal Jan- guages called You Teok My Talk: Aboriginal Literacy and Empowerment.

Among other languages, the study did not contain complete data on the Tsim- shian family of languages that includes the Nisga’a and Kitsumkalum people, thereby excluding them from critically endangered status.

Lahache said the assembly will conduct their own na- tional survey this year.

DOROTHY HORNER was one of the original carvers of this totem pole at Kilsumkalum.

Measure mother tongue, says new report

The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, April 7, 1999 - AS

CORRESPONDENGE FOR THE TERRACE STANDARD

THE NISGA’A and Tsinshian languages are both rated as endangered in a 1996 Statistics Canada survey of aborigisal languages.

Just under 800 Nisga’s people and 465 Tsim- shian people say their zalive language is what they first learned as tleir mother tongue and that they still understas it,

The aumber for Gixsan people is stronger, with 1,200 identifying the Gitxsan language as their mother tongue’ Accordingly, Gitxsan is rated as ‘‘viable’’, albeit with a much smaller population base tha Canada’s most widely spoken native langu:ges —- Cree and Ojibway.

Less than a quartet of Nisga’a and Tsimshian people who understnd their mother tongue say it’s the language thly speak most ofteri at home. That’s a sign of sme erosion or decline of a language, the stud/ says.

The figure for Gitxsan is somewhat better, with 39 per cent $f mother tongue speakers in- dicating they spedk it at home,

The average ag of those who say it’s the lan-

i

guage they speak most often at home is 57 years for the Nisga’a, 53 for the Tsimshian and 45 years ald for the Gitxsan.

‘The higher the average age, the fewer young people have learned or still undersiand the Jan- guage and the older the people who slill speak it,” the study says. “When these older people die, so may the languages,’’

However there is a ray of light in the stats.

The index of ability, which tracks how many people have learned the language as a second language or fater in life, is fairly strong for

northwest languages, and for Nisga’a in particu.

Jar.

“This may suggest some degree of language revival,” says the study. -

That’s good, it says, but there’s slill no equiv-

alent to learning a language as a mother tongue.

and speaking it at home. “Spoken in the home, language is used as the

working tool of everyday life,’? the study said.

‘Tn contrasl, when learned as a second lan-

guage, it is often used in potentially limited situations only as may be the case, for cxample, in Immersion programs,”

“Because unlike other minority language groups, aboriginals cannot rely on new im- migrants to maintain or increase their popula- lion of speakers, passing on the language from parents to children is critical for all indigenous languages’ survival,”

Overall, Canada’s native languages are among the most endangered in the world, the study says.

‘Significant numbers of languages have ei- ther already disappeared or are close to exlinc- tion, and among those spoken today, only three of some S50 are viable with a large population base.”’

Steps to counter the decline of languages in- clude language instruction programs, aboriginal

‘media programming, and the recording of

elders’ stories, songs and accounts of history in dhe aboriginal language,

The Mail Bag

Will treaty work?

Dear Sir:

I imagine a time down the road whereby all the terms of the Nisga’a treaty are met and I sce a hicrarchy, the tribal-nuling rich,

How does this possibly benefit the entire Nisga’a population? Will they wind up being dominated, neglected and/or abused by their leaders? Wasn't this treaty sold on the idea of what is in the best interest of all Nisga’a?

The Nisga’a have been focusing on this treaty for over 100 years according to any news articles | have read. This mission has been passed down from genera- tion to generation. What they interpret as finally having found a co-operative listening ear with the provincial and federal governments smells of a trap to me. A trap devised to only serve the political agendas of certain key politicians,

Over a hundred years ago, when apparently this all got started, the northwest was just being settled. Now, I wasn't there and neither were they, but forcfathers of mine were there just as theirs were, history books re- corded it. In other words it didn’t go unnoticed,

So we all basically kind of know what went on over 100 years ago and since. We know the wrong that was inflicted on natives, right down to what can only be referred to as abusive. We also know the abuses they inflicted on cach other and the tribal conflicts thal went on long before a white man landed on the continent.

1 loathe to rationalize abuse, but I imagine if I was a new setiler to a foreign land 100 ago and witnessed tribal conflicts, I would find it very difficult to risk my life so ¥ could be an example of how we should all get along.

We knew about metals, building, planting, harvest- ing, etc. We could read and write. ] imagine we could have been arrogant coming to a new land and finding indigenous people who still chewed animal skins for clothing and hand crafled cookery and weapons for throwing, cooking only over open fires and believing oily in their medicine man to cure illness. Does this take much of an imagination?

There has been a lot of atonement for past abuses to natives. Limited space does not provide room for list- ing the privileges natives enjoy that non-matives are not allowed ar have to pay for.

Not only do we share all of our modem day inven- tions and discoveries with natives, (right down to bi- focals and false teeth) we also provide them at no cost. We supplement their housing even.

When we suffer a recession, natives arc slill buying new vehicles and cart fulls of groceries, Are we ex- pected to believe this money came from their labour? When asked, several natives denied it was government money saying it came from the band council.

I found it so sad reading a newspaper article of a young native wornan Who was the first northwest na- tive to graduate university with a degree. Education funds are available to ali natives, This is a remarkable young woman.

My sadness was due to where are the others if they want self goverment and independence, Money is usually what prevents anyone else’s kid from continu- ing post secondary education.’

So I have to go back and ask myself, how as this been thought out? Has anyone in the process given thought of allowances or made provisions for potential failures so they can be corrected as they occur?

Who has ever seen any enterprise go off without a hitch? Money just doesn’t cut it without the labour, knowledge and commitment to make any enterprise succeed. Where is the evidence to indicate they can and ‘will work out and if it doesn’t, so what?

If the government allocates our tax dollars for this Ueaty and it fails, what do we do then? Insist the Nisga’a honour their side of things.

If it fails will we watch their hunger and illness, go back to fearing what a starving group of people will do just to ect food? a

Somewhere there is a solution, Financially supporting, populations of people is a huge drain on our tax dollars. We have half our wages taken from our cheques, We work to support ourselves and are forced to contribute to supporting others year after year after year.

The population of these people we suppart grows and grows, The more kids they have, the more money we give them, We recycle our paycheques by earning the dollars back again after the people who received their dole go shopping. We repay the tax again on these eamings and the cycle gocs on and on,

"How far can you stretch an elastic band? And what

"example is all this setting for all (native and non- native) children and the non-natives who see their own available freebies and hitch their wagon to the welfarc dole? The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

There is a solution, but I hesitate to believe it can be found in this treaty. We, natives and non-natives, have years of dependency to correct and J] don’t think more money, just because it is attached to a picce of paper this time, cuts to any real solution.

Linda Jean, Terrace, B.C.

Loudmouth students

Dear Sir:

The ongoing and, seemingly endless, enquiry into the APEC affair is hopefully a futile drawn out attempt by lawyers on both sides to fatten their appetites.

Why should these lawless students that have such a brazen disregard for the laws of the land or any other form of discipline expect to be supplied taxpayers’ money on their behalf. ,

Their bone of contention being that perhaps Prime Minister Jean Chretien ordered the RCMP crackdown if it became necessary. Mr. Chretien surely had every right if this was so. These arrogant loudmouth students had no intention of complying or remaining within the alloted arca, Doug Bulleid, Terrace, B.C.

About letters

THE TERRACE Standard welcomes (letters to the editor, Our deadline is noon Fridays; noon Thursiays ond long weekend. You can write us at 3210 Clinton St, Terrace, B.C, V8G 5R2. Our fax number is 250- 638-8432 or you can email us at standard @kermode.net

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