Winnipeg summit chips away at what Indigenous language learners call 'the block'
CBC
Over 100 people discussed the mental, emotional and spiritual "block" students can experience when learning their ancestral languages at a language conference in Winnipeg last weekend.
"I had the idea about 30 years ago to have a conference where we would talk about the block," said Patricia Ningewance, an Ojibway language speaker, teacher and writer who organized the First Language Reclamation Summit at the University of Manitoba.
"It gets blocked in our throat and makes my language learning difficult."
Ningewance, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, is from Lac Seul FIrst Nation in northwestern Ontario but has been living and working in Winnipeg for the past 40 years.
Attendees were divided into groups, each with a facilitator that led them through discussion about trauma that comes up with reclaiming languages, strategies for education and action for the future.
"When you speak in a language, you're living a different life," said Ningewance.
"When we speak English, we're using the lens of the Europeans across the ocean and that's not us."
Ningewance said a lot of people cry when confronting the block so to help console them each breakout room had a teddy bear to hug.
"It was the very first time I think people got to talk about this; it's very personal," said Ningewance.
Ningewance now has the job of taking what was learned at the conference and putting it into summit findings and recommendations.
Cesii Haas, a second-year University of Manitoba student, said he realized he wasn't the only one with the block by attending this event.
"The reality is that I don't really have anybody in my life who I could talk to about that sort of thing that would really understand," he said.
He is from Peguis First Nation, about 160 kilometres north of Winnipeg, and his mother is Métis. He said it wasn't until he was 12 that he started to connect with his Ojibway roots.
"Having not had the opportunity to really connect to language in my early childhood, I just consider it a disservice to myself now if I didn't learn," said Haas.
A decision over how the provincial government regulates moose hunting in a First Nation's traditional territory now rests with a Manitoba judge, whose ruling will be precedent-setting, lawyers in the case say.
A teenager diagnosed with bird flu in British Columbia is the first domestically acquired human case of H5N1 avian influenza, the Public Health Agency of Canada says.
The Manitoba government made a "political compromise" in its decision to issue a reduced number of moose hunting licences to non-Indigenous hunters in northern parts of the province earlier this year, a lawyer representing a First Nation in the area has argued in court.
If it weren't for a stem cell transplant — less than half a cup of blood from a stranger's umbilical cord — four-year-old Tristan Ford would almost certainly have died as an infant, his parents say.
A Métis saddle from the early 1800s is at the centre of an exhibit that opened last month at a Swiss museum, along with contemporary beadwork created by other Red River Métis artists.
A dome-shaped device floating in Halifax's Northwest Arm could easily be confused with a buoy, but it is actually a contraption meant to turn ocean water into fresh water.
As of Tuesday, there are limits on the number of bottles of spirits a person can buy at the B.C. Liquor store in Tofino, a move that leaders of the Ahousaht First Nation were pushing for.
This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
Mohawk code talkers and their missions were so vital during the Second World War, that some believe without them, there was no way of winning of the war.
Two feisty ferret babies in Virginia are being hailed as a symbol of hope for the future of their species.
On day one of Donald Trump's presidency, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he'll be advising Trump to take fluoride out of public water. The former independent presidential hopeful — and prominent proponent of debunked public health claims — has been told he'll be put in charge of health initiatives in the new Trump administration. He's described fluoride as "industrial waste."