February is Indigenous Languages Month in the NWT, and territorial languages commissioner Brenda M. Gauthier hopes people will make the most of it.
“I would like everyone – and I will do it myself – to make an effort to speak your language this month,” she said on Feb. 1. “Really make an effort.”
Gauthier has been the NWT’s languages commissioner since January 2021.
Her role and her office exist to protect the territory’s 11 official languages, as set out in the NWT Official Languages Act. That legislation “applies to all institutions of the legislative assembly and GNWT departments, corporations, boards, agencies and courts, established by the authority of the legislative assembly,” according to her office’s website.
“We all know that language ties into the culture and the people,” Gauthier said. “We have nine official Indigenous languages in addition to French and English. I do think it’s very important that we promote all languages and recognize all languages.
“Language is basically who we are, and it’s how we express ourselves and how we communicate with each other,” she added. “Our languages describe how we connect to the land and how we connect to other people and to the area, so I think it’s very important, because if we lose that, I think we lose part of our culture and who we are, identity-wise.”
One of the functions of Gauthier’s office is to field complaints from people who feel their language rights, outlined in the Official Languages Act, are not being met.
People can make complaints by phone, by fax or, if in the vicinity, by walking into Gauthier’s Fort Smith office.
On the whole, she said she doesn’t receive many grievances.
“I will admit this office has had a low intake of complaints,” she said. “When I first started, we were getting regular complaints, but I will admit this last year we have not got any formal complaints.”
The lack of objections from the public could speak to the language revitalization efforts underway across the territory, such as the GNWT’s mentor-apprentice program (MAP).
Overall, Gauthier believes the NWT’s Indigenous languages are in good hands, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.
“I do think great work is being done, but that shouldn’t be all that’s being done,” she said. “The Official Languages Act is very focused on the government’s provision of Indigenous languages service along with French and English, and I do think services provisioned in all official languages need to be improved, especially Indigenous languages. I do think more work needs to be done.
“One thing I would like is for people to hear their language,” she added. “You can offer the MAP program where you learn it, but if you don’t hear it [often], I think that causes part of the deterioration where we lose the language because we don’t hear it spoken. So I do think we need to hear more of the Indigenous languages in government settings.”