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Chapter 16 | Joy Cohnstaedt (continued) The retention and maintenance of Aboriginal languages has been an on-going concern because there is no other country in which they are home languages. Federal programmes available to all other Canadians did little to encourage their use. The 1982 and 1983 public list of titles supported by Canada Council block grants programme for publishers made no reference to languages other than French and English. Publishers eligible for department of Communications support were assessed according minimum sales in an official language market. And the government’s translation grants encouraged a greater exchange between English and French language texts by Canadian writers or their translation into languages other than French or English for distribution to audiences abroad. But these criteria excluded the Aboriginal languages of Canada. At the same time, the Northern Native Broadcast Program was limited, although there was a substantial indigenous population speaking Aboriginal languages in the south. Furthermore, the accepted practice of multilingual interpretation and publications had not been widely adopted by Canadian galleries and museums, although there are occasional examples of Aboriginal voices on tapes related to specific exhibits. However, among the more recent firsts, is the creation of an Aboriginal Television station based in Winnipeg and broadcast throughout Canada in English, French and Aboriginal languages as part of the required cable offerings, and the adoption of a strategy for artists of Aboriginal heritage by the Canada Council for the Arts. The period between the White Paper in 1969 and the patriation of the British North America Act in 1982 was marked by policy uncertainty, protest and confrontation, for example, by the James Bay Cree in northern Quebec. It should not be surprising that later in the Manitoba Legislature Elijah Harper, an Oj-Cree Chief of the Red Sucker Lake and the only Aboriginal MLA (NDP, Ruppertsland) held up an eagle feather, and delayed the passage of the Meech Lake Accord. Phil Fontaine was then head of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. A former civil servant in DIAND, he tried to establish better relations between Ottawa and Aboriginal communities when he was later elected Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. He observed that it was not the Indians who opposed distinct society status for Quebec, but rather that the Aboriginal peoples with their 55 distinct original languages, 52 of which are distinct to Canada, are on the brink of extinction and therefore even more distinct. Volume 3, “Gathering Strength” of The Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Affairs provided specific recommendations related to language, arts and heritage. They relate to the need: a) to identify and protect historical and sacred sites and to safeguard Aboriginal heritage from misappropriation and misrepresentation; b) to conserve and revitalize Aboriginal languages; c) to enhance the presence of Aboriginal people and cultures in the media; d) and to support the literary and artistic expression of Aboriginal people. One would like to think that the force of this Report, the self-government negotiations, land claims and the establishment of a new Arctic territory governed by Inuit, Nunavut, on April 1, 1999 might begin to transform the lives of Aboriginal peoples living in Canada. As a whole the Commission has been described as the first time in modern history that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples have reviewed their collective past and charted their future course. It is fast forward to modern pluralism. Recent developments in the arts and cultural community such as increased repatriation of arts and material culture from museums in Canada and elsewhere to their Aboriginal homes, the recognition of indigenous theatre and other performers as measured by the growth of music videos and CDs, and sponsorship of Aboriginal Voices and other publications of Canadian Aboriginal writers, suggest that some non-Aboriginal cultural institutions are beginning to understand contemporary work by Aboriginal peoples to be a genuine indigenous expression and to acknowledge the collective ownership of the material culture by indigenous peoples. Earlier this year in conversation with representatives of First Nations organizations in Saskatchewan about cultural policy, I was told explicitly that discussions must take place on a nation-to-nation basis by the appropriate government representatives, and an unconditional transfer of resources was expected. This month the first film produced in the Inuktitut language, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, has been included in the Cannes film festival. While scholars debate the classification of indigenous arts and culture within a linear and art historical typology, reproductions of the material culture of Aboriginal peoples are being manufactured by Third World peoples around the globe for sale in North America and elsewhere. Computer programmers are creating programs that allow each of us to design our own Northwest Coast compositions based on the U-form, ovoid and form lines of the Haida and other First Nations. If fraudulent reproductions are a form of compliment, then Canada’s Aboriginal peoples are widely admired. But it is the work of contemporary Aboriginal artists, work that fits no preconceived mould or theory that will show the way in the twenty-first century. |
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