Quyanainni, Mr. Speaker. The United Nations has designated 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages, and the NWT has announced February as Indigenous Languages Month here in the NWT.
Mr. Speaker, what does this special focus bring? It brings the opportunity to highlight the urgent need to protect and nourish Indigenous languages and to emphasize this government's responsibility to dedicate itself to undoing the years of damage done to Indigenous languages by settler-colonial laws, policies, and practices.
A couple of generations have passed since children were punished for speaking their language. Even today, children still face covert pressures to conform to English monolingualism. For example, it is difficult for language learners to regularly converse with fluent speakers; to find books, films, and other media in their language; or to pursue meaningful language education as children, when their brain is most perceptive.
Mr. Speaker, language immersion is what is needed. The trouble is that is hard to do. Nevertheless, it is what we need to do.
Mr. Speaker, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People says: "States shall, in conjunction with Indigenous peoples, take effective measures in order for individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access when possible to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language."
Mr. Speaker, this is an option, hard-won, open to Francophone children in the Northwest Territories. It is also something Indigenous peoples have tackled around the world, from the original "languages nests" of the Maori in New Zealand, to the K-12 Hawaiian language education program in Hawaii, to dedicated curricula in Indigenous communities in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia. Here in the Northwest Territories, extended immersion programs, perhaps up to at least grade five or six, would be an incredible thing for our traditional languages.
Mr. Speaker, the GNWT has been working on language revitalization for many years, and yet the stakes have never been higher. The most recent action plan tells us: "Revitalizing languages is an enormous task. It is said that language is the key to and the heart of culture, and as cultures change, so do their languages. Similarly, as languages change or are lost, so, too, are entire cultures."
Mr. Speaker, this action plan commits to expanding and improving Indigenous language programs in Northwest Territories schools and to renewing the Aboriginal Language and Culture-based Education Directive. Mr. Speaker, later, I will have questions for the appropriate Minister. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.