Aboriginal communities across Canada are implementing Aboriginal language programs in their schools. In the present research, we explore the impact of learning through an Aboriginal language on students' English and Aboriginal language skills by contrasting a Mi'kmaq language immersion program with a Mi'kmaq as a second language program. The…

On a chilly Toronto evening in November 2005, an envelope was opened in a darkened auditorium, and the words spoken reached out across the land to Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan. No doubt Lindsay Knight's family was watching the televised Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards that night and would have felt elated to hear her being honored with…

In this paper, we share phenomena experienced by a multi-cultural research team working collaboratively with Wolastoq (Maliseet) First Nations Elders to document rapidly disappearing Wolastoq language, culture, and knowledge. This knowledge will ultimately be stored in databanks for future educational, community, and heritage use. Embedded within…

For the state of Washington's one-hundredth birthday, in 1989, Native peoples there decided to revive a distinctive mode of transportation--long-distance journeys by canoe--along with an entire culture associated with it. Born as the "Paddle to Seattle," during the past two decades these canoe journeys have become a summertime staple for…

Among the Haudenosaunee, the clan system is an ancient tradition of matrilineal descent that has maintained the social, political, economic, and spiritual cohesion of the people for centuries. Following the American Revolution and the relocation of large numbers of Haudenosaunee people from America's traditional homelands in what is now New York…

This paper reports on findings from the Learning for Understanding through Culturally-Inclusive Imaginative Development project (LUCID). LUCID has been a 5-year (2004-2009) research and implementation endeavour and a partnership between Simon Fraser University (SFU) and three districts in British Columbia, Canada. Via emotionally engaging…

Mi'gmaq, an Algonkian language of northeastern North America, is one of nearly 50 surviving Indigenous languages in Canada that are usually not considered to be viable into the next century. Only Inuktitut, Cree, and Ojibwe presently have enough younger speakers to provide a critical mass for long-term survival. In one Mi'gmaq community, however,…

Together with ubiquitous agent evocateurs, Coyote and Raven, the authors engage trickster discourse and narrative shape shifting as they share research protocols and community conversations based on their research with the four Lower Stl'atl'imx communities (Xa'xtsa, N'Quat'qua, Skatin and Samahquam First Nations) of British Columbia, Canada, in…

The vitality of most Indigenous languages in North America, like minority languages in many parts of the world, is at risk due to the pressures of majority languages and cultures. The transmission of Indigenous languages through school-based programs is a wide-spread approach to maintaining and revitalizing threatened languages in Canada and the…

This paper discusses the language contact situation between Algonquian languages and French in Canada. Michif, a French-Plains Cree mixed language, is used as a case study for linguistic results of language contact. The paper describes the phonological, morphological, and syntactic conflict sites between the grammars of Plains Cree and French, as…

Tracing the history of Native American schooling in North America, this book emphasizes factors in society at large--and sometimes within indigenous communities--which led to Native American children being separate from the white majority. Charles Glenn examines the evolving assumptions about race and culture as applied to schooling, the reactions…

This article examines the parallel development of language planning and land planning within the Loon River Cree First Nation. Loon River Cree territory, located in north-central Alberta, Canada, is an area where major oil and gas industry, as well as logging and mining are constantly encroaching. The community, who still use Cree in their daily…

Includes discussion of the Moravian spelling system, recent sound changes, present orthography, autonomous phonemic inventory, clusters, gross phonetic allophony, and canonical form. (MSE)

The underlying foundations for all elements of this "Cree Language and Culture 12-year Program Guide to Implementation (Kindergarten to Grade 3)" are Cree values--those viewpoints and ways of being that characterize the Cree way of life. They are as important today in educating students in the Cree language and culture as they have ever…