Native issues Essay

The section “Language and Culture” proposes an “Aboriginal Languages Act,” which would protect all aboriginal languages. It also proposes that funding for the revitalization

Chelsea Vowel in her book Indigenous Writes speaks about how with the shift of more Aboriginal peoples moving from isolated environments where the notion of being allowably indigenous comes into play. The concept details how Canadians are used to seeing Indigenous peoples through a very pigeon-holed view of their culture and identity. More often than not, this view comprises of Indigenous peoples expressing their culture “within the context of cultural celebration” (68).

The film “The Linguists” follows linguists Gregory Anderson and David Harrison on their journey to learn about and document endangered languages in Bolivia, India, Arizona, and Siberia. Through their quest, they are able to interact with some of the few remaining speakers of languages that are near death and they manage to make an impact on how these communities view their heritage language. Focusing on the moribund languages of Siberia and Arizona, it becomes evident that speakers of the heritage language feel a love for the language and the culture it represents, but went through periods of oppression and embarrassment for being speakers of a minority language that ultimately shaped their attitudes on the language.

Throughout Canada’s 150 years of being a country, Indigenous people were oppressed. The children were forced into residential schools, and eventually, over decades, the entire culture was lost. Looking back on it now, it is clear that what had happened was a “cultural genocide.” Cultural genocide is defined as, “the destruction of structures and practices that allow a group to continue as a group” (Moffit, Brown, 2017).

In this research paper, I will be explaining how western colonialism and racism destroyed the reputation of aboriginal peoples in Canada. The reason why I chose this topic because it shows the strong relationship to anthropology and after taking aboriginal studies 30, it also shows that I have a clear understanding about the history of aboriginal peoples in Canada, the struggles they have been through over the past decade and the challenges they still face today in modern day society. I’ll be addressing these issues in a couple of paragraphs on the discrimination and the inequalities of these “minorities” and how they had to assimilate into European culture, leaving their way of life behind them.

The main issue faced was losing a sense of their culture. Canada being a multicultural society, allows for all people to practice their culture and they have the freedom to believe what they want. The aboriginals lost that right when their land was taken over. It was lost because they no longer owned their nature and it was taken over by technology and architecture, making them less united with the forest and the land that they lived in. By taking over the land they were also forced to have to change their education. In schools they were no longer allowed to learn Aboriginal culture. In 2002 by studying Canadian schools it was said that as many as 30 percent of elementary students and 40 percent of high school students did not speak even a little of their Native tongues (Schissel, 2002). The reason that this is the case can be because Aboriginal families stopped practicing their culture and heritage at home therefore distancing the children from understanding where they came from. That is not because they no longer

Aboriginal societies were admired for their sense of belonging; everybody in their language group was their family. Everybody helped in the raising, care and discipline of children in the group (Bourke and Edwards, 1994. p.97).

Aboriginal people in Canada are the native peoples in North America within the boundaries of present-day Canada. In the 1880’s there was a start of residential schools which took Aboriginal kids from their family to schools to learn the Roman Catholics way of culture and not their own. In residential schools Aboriginal languages were forbidden in most operations of the school, Aboriginal ways were abolished and the Euro-Canadian manner was held out as superior. Aboriginal’s residential schools are careless, there were mental and physical abuse, Aboriginals losing their culture and the after effects of residential schools.

Although Tremblay talks about the American culture’s influence on Canada as a whole, his main concern in this article is Quebec, which is in a separate league than the rest of Canada due to its different linguistics. Tremblay

A large amount of aboriginal people in Canada currently suffer from a cultural crisis that the indigenous culture fade away in many years, resulting in lack of culture diversity and aboriginal psychological issue in such developed country. Because aboriginal children are pushed into residential school and lived far away from their home and parents, it is a proliferating pace of eliminating aboriginal people’s civilization in future generations and also psychological brutality. The loss of culture and language, the loss of parenting skills, the agony of being separated from family, from community many years would contribute to an alienation,

The Course Pack provided for the Native American Philosophy contained nine articles combined to demonstrate the huge philosophical gap of ideologies between Canada and the Aboriginal people. A couple articles comment how Canada in the past has attempted to discriminate, assimilate and destroy the aboriginal people and when that did not work, their cultures and assimilate them into European Canada ways. Evidently this has not worked. The course pack talks about the differences of ideologies being because of different languages, assumptions, and cultural views. In order to narrow the gap we need to understand these differences on both sides to a greater extent.

The Canadian people have always prided themselves as champions of democracy and are universally respected for their record on human rights. Although holistically this could be argued, especially when compared to the United States and other Western states, the record concerning Aboriginals, both past and present, has yet to live up to their self-set standard. Defined simply as anyone who traces his/her ancestry back to pre-European colonization, there exist mass diversity within its community. Although various political actors dispute the actual number of Aboriginals, Statistics Canada reported in 2006 that 1,678,200 people indicated they were ethnically Aboriginal or roughly 5.4 percent of the population (Statistics Canada: Population Counts).

Recently, researchers working on a project geared toward the cataloging of basic word lists of the endangered aboriginal tongues in Australia, “met the sole living speaker of Amurdag, a language in the Northern Territory that has already been declared extinct” (Wilford, John Noble). It is doubtful that the language can be brought back, as the speaker “strained to recall words he had last heard from his late father” (Wilford, John Noble) but researchers were at least able to make a record of it.

Indigenous cultures, traditions and languages have been disappearing ever since the creation of the residential school system. The physical, mental and sexual abuse that Native children endured in these schools is a horrible part of Canadian History and still has negative effects on Indigenous people to this day. In my vision of an ideal Canada, I imagine a Canada where Native people regain what the residential schools stole

Canada has a long past with the Indigenous people, that is damaged because of our shameful actions in the 1800’s. The Canadian government established Residential schools to assimilate Indigenous people into mainstream Canadian society, wanting “to kill the Indian in the child ” (Brief History). Forbidding them to speak their native language or practice their cultures or beliefs (Laing, 2013). With over 130 residential schools children with no choice were taken from their homes, and families were divided and separated over long periods of times and distances. (Brief History). In addition, the innocent children in these residential schools fell victim