‘It’s not dying, it’s slowly coming back’: Mi’kmaq language revitalization in Elsipogtog

Wenju’su’n means apple in Mi’kmaq. It is the combination of wenuj, meaning French person, and su’n, meaning cranberry. My dad introduced this word to me. When you break down the word it tells a story: apples were introduced by French colonial settlers.

I was raised in a primarily English household, but Mi’kmaq was always present in my life. My parents would teach me new words, often on walks or drives. At the ice-cream store, my grandmother would remind me to say “wela’lin,” which means thank you. Speaking and learning my language made me feel proud. Before I knew what it meant to be First Nations, I knew that my language was special.

“I started learning English in school,” my grandmother, Mi’kmaq teacher Mona Francis said in an interview. “I didn’t speak it very well, but we had to learn.”

Elsipogtog councillor Teagan Copage shared a similar experience. He said he grew up speaking Mi’kmaq primarily. “At my age, it had its pros and cons, you know,  being one of the last full speakers of our generation.” Copage said he had difficulty in school. “Struggling with English, you know,” he said. “Living in a white man’s world.”

“I could express myself a lot more poetically with English because of my native language,” said Francis, my grandmother. “I learned it quickly because our language is so descriptive.” Sadly, the goal of Indian day school was not just to teach students English. “I was in grade four, I was told, ‘you Indians are nothing but a bunch of dogs,’ and I lived with that for the longest time.”

She teaches Mi’kmaq through an online course. The course currently has students from Bonar Law Memorial School, Miramichi Valley High School, Harrison Trimble High School, and Tantramar Regional High School.

The students sound full of pride when they speak Mi’kmaq, she told me. “The ancestors are happy; ancestors can understand them.” Francis not only teaches the course but had a part in developing it. “We asked that the language be taught in school… They said, ‘No, you need a curriculum,’ so we worked on the curriculum.”

“We had to make sense of what they wanted to teach and how we would make sense of it in terms of how we teach our language,” Francis said. “We had to first think about it in English and then switch our brain to think about it in Mi’kmaq.”

Translating Mi’kmaq to a classroom form is challenging. “You can’t teach it too formally because nobody talks like that,” said Copage. He said revitalization should come from parents. “When it all comes down to it, it starts at home, right?”

Unfortunately, many parents do not have the tools to teach Mi’kmaq to their children. Many lost their language. “The parents believed they would succeed by speaking English,” Francis said. “You’ve got to remember, in the residential school and Indian day school, being an Indian was wrong,” Copage said. The question is, how does a community recover from this?

“First is encouragement,” said Copage. “Encourage people to speak it to their children or to learn how to read or write.” One step taken by the local community that Copage commended was the kindergarten Mi’kmaq immersion program in Elsipogtog.  “I feel like it was a big start,” Francis said. He suggested further action to extend the program beyond kindergarten: “I feel like it should have been through every grade.”

Copage said he favours the approach taken by Eskasoni Mi’kmaw Nation. Mi’kmaq is heavily featured in their convenience schools, band office, and school, he said. “More bilingual things for sure,” Copage said. For Elsipogtog, Copage suggested more signs written in Mi’kmaq within the community and public announcements in English and Mi’kmaq.

Francis brought up the importance of accessibility, noting that it’s difficult to practice Mi’kmaq outside the community. She described a daily practice that includes reading and writing things down in Mi’kmaq, recording herself speaking, and then listening back to the audio, so she doesn’t forget the language. “There’s gotta be something there,” she said.

Copage and Francis prove that there is success is Mi’kmaq. Copage was elected to council in 2022, at the age of 19. He believes that knowing Mi’kmaq helped strengthen his relationship with the community. “I feel like it was a blessing to know it really,” he said.  “Almost like an advantage.” And Francis has been able to follow a career path that embraces her culture. “I am proud of who I am,” said Francis. “This is what I want to do.”

Francis is optimistic about the future of Mi’kmaq. “I’m proud of teaching it to keep it alive,” she said. “It’s not dying, it’s slowly coming back.” She is surprised to see the language gain popularity. “Other people are wanting to learn the culture and wanting to learn our language,” Francis said. “It’s kinda cool to see, because I grew up in a cruel time.”

Mi’kmaq is very much alive. The rise is reflected in data from Statistics Canada. By 2021, Mi’kmaq was the most widely spoken Indigenous language among First Nations people in Atlantic Canada, with 8,195 speakers, an increase of 5.9 per cent from 2016,” according to a study published last year.

Now I am on a journey of reconnection. Over the past year, I have had the privilege of taking Mi’kmaq courses through the St. Thomas University Aotiitj program. I am happy to have participated in the revitalization of the language. For years I held on to the select words that I knew, but now I can converse at a basic level.  Taking Mi’kmaq classes made me feel more connected to my culture. All these years later I still feel pride. Mi’kmaq is a precious resource for the new generation.

Anna-Leah Simon is a St. Thomas University student and a member of Elsipogtog First Nation. She wrote this article as part of JOUR 2033, Local Reporting, Global Media, in St. Thomas University’s Aotiitj program in Elsipogtog.