Too late to learn another colonial language, say Indigenous students opposing Quebec's Bill 96

Earlier this spring, a group of about 15 Indigenous students attended a meeting at Dawson College in downtown Montreal. 

The purpose was for the students to voice their concerns about the impending impacts of Quebec's new language charter coming into force at English CEGEPs like Dawson. 

As of next fall, students at the province's English junior colleges would have to take three core courses in French or take a total of five second-language French courses, instead of the current two.

The students — from different Indigenous communities across the province, including Cree, Inuit and Kanien'kehá:ka — had started to hear of their peers choosing to study outside Quebec or drop plans for higher education altogether, discouraged by the extra French courses at a time when the revitalization of ancestral languages has become not only a priority but an urgent matter of cultural preservation after centuries of colonization.

"While it's really nice the French people are trying to keep their language alive, it really affects my people," said Zye Rashontiiostha Mayo, 19.

"A lot of us don't know our own language. Almost all of us know English. If we have to pick between another language we want to learn, we're never going to pick French."

Mayo, who is from Kahnawà:ke, a Kanien'kehá:ka community near Montreal, was at the meeting. He recently completed Dawson's Journeys program, a transition year for Indigenous students to ease into college and city life. 

So there the students were, standing in front of a room of about 50 Dawson administrators, deans, academic advisors and other staff, most of them non-Indigenous, about to explain how they wanted the college's support in facing the Quebec government against this new law. 

Mayo decided to go first. He'd noticed in the past year that he was often more comfortable speaking out, and that he wanted to be a voice for those who weren't.

"I was like, 'There's students that come to Montreal to learn and they bring their family, not just themselves. They come with kids and they have to teach their kids English and Cree or whatever language they have. And then they would have to teach their kids French, too,'" Mayo recounted in a phone interview this week. 

"That is an insane ask because you're asking the parents to learn a new language, teach a new language, and also try and succeed in whatever career path they're going into."

Last week, Quebec's five English CEGEPs penned an open letter to Premier Francois Legault saying the changes to the French language charter, known as Bill 96, "are creating multiple systemic and discriminatory barriers" to the roughly 300 Indigenous students studying at their schools.

That letter is a result of student advocacy, according to a number of people who were at the meeting. The colleges created videos with the testimonies of Indigenous students sharing the hardships of leaving their communities to attend CEGEP, while attempting to preserve their own cultural knowledge and languages. 

"The students feel strongly that their futures are being put at risk with the implementation of additional courses, as well as the French exit exam," said Tiawenti:non Canadian, co-ordinator of the First Peoples' Centre at Dawson, who helped setup the meeting.