WORD COLLECTION HELPS PRESERVE LANGUAGE
In a partnership between Canada and the Language Conservancy in the United States, a group of tour schoalrs sat together for ten days, outside of Calgary, to collect over 10,000 words from elders across three Stoney bands, at the Stoney Nakoda Resort and Casino.
The team of four men sought to collect and develop a lexical set in order to produce resources for lower level students.
The team developed resources and learning materials to aid and structure these courses and the future learning of the language, hoping that others will add to the resources.
While these materials have pedagogical aims, they also purport to contribute to the pride of the community, and hence to build it’s language ideologies and heritage pride, for future generations.
The knowledge and use of the Stoney language does shift in size and quality across families, individuals, and groups. The three bands in which the language predominates are the Bearspaw, the Chiniki, and the Wesley bands.
Yet, the resources for these communities to develop or retain the Stoney language are few and very rarely developed and implemented. As such, much input is needed in order to salvage the language, in an extreme effort towards its revitalization.