One woman's quest to save her Wolastoqey language

In 2022, Lisa Perley-Dutcher, a longtime nurse and health professional, opened the first and only Wolastoqey immersion school in Fredericton.

Since then, 18 students have attended Kekhimin, currently based in a temporary space at the Killarney Lake Rotary Lodge.

Growing up, Perley-Dutcher attended a day school at Neqotkuk (Tobique) First Nation,  where children suffered physical and emotion abuse, including being strapped if they spoke their own language.

In her mind, this connected her language with pain and she avoided speaking it while growing up. Relearning her language as an adult has helped her address "those traumas," she said.

Establishing her immersion school has been a way to turn the tables. Fewer than 100 people speak Wolastoqey fluently and most are elders, so this is a way to keep the language from disappearing.

Perley-Dutcher, a registered nurse for 30 years, said that the deaths of older family members caused her to realize the importance of language preservation, which she called a vital aspect of health.

She spent her whole career working in community health nursing to improve health outcomes for First Nations people, including setting up a national home care program called First Nations and Inuit Home and Community Care, and serving as the president of the Indigenous Nurses Association of Canada. 

While leading that association, her focus was to create a mandate to provide culturally competent care to Indigenous communities, which included spearheading the "first Aboriginal nursing initiative" program at UNB, she said, called Nutsihpiluwewicik, to provide a bridge for First Nations people to enter the profession.

"My career has been very much focused on health," Perley-Dutcher said.

"I did my masters on cultural competency and cultural safety, I've done some work with communities in terms of looking at racism and how to deal with that, setting up patient navigators in our healthcare system."

In 2021, she graduated from a language program St. Thomas University.

"I took a two-year language intensive program on Wolastoqey and after I finished that, me and some of my fellow students, we set up a language immersion program," she said.

She said that she directly connects Indigenous health to all elements of Indigenous life, including language.

"I feel like this also is addressing a health outcome in terms of identity, in terms of mental health and self worth and the whole process of reclaiming language in itself."

Perley-Dutcher's son, Jeremy Dutcher, is an award-winning musician. His career is devoted to revitalizing Wolastoqey culture through music, and his first album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, was entirely in the Wolastoqey language. 

Dutcher, who is based in Montreal, said that this was because it was his first language and "our young people didn't have music in our language." 

"When we enter a room, we're going to introduce ourselves in our language first," Dutcher said.

"And so for me, I was like, 'it's got to be rooted within a cultural place.' If you're going to introduce yourself, you've got to do it properly."

The language was something that Dutcher was familiar with from his childhood but he taught himself to read and write it when studying music and anthropology at Dalhousie University. 

He credits his mother for his focus on language and culture and says that, because of that, he's "been trying to shout about Kehkimin from the rooftops." 

Dutcher said that his involvement with Kehkimin intensified during the early stages of the pandemic, when concerts and live performances stopped. He was forced to think about the deeper significance of his music, which "is to talk about the language."

Now, Dutcher works with teachers on language development and pays visits to the school whenever he's in Fredericton to meet with and encourage the students. 

Dutcher said that intergenerational commitments like his and his mother's are vital.

When the older generation gathers, they often speak together in Wolastoqey. Some even still speak the language at family gatherings, where younger generations can't understand, making it clear how much has been lost.

Because of this, he said it's important to have a strong connection between youth and elders, "weaving together those generational ties because there's so much that we can learn from each other."

Perley-Dutcher said Kehkimin has been supported by the province but lost significant funding in recent cuts. In 2023, funding received from New Brunswick's Environmental Trust Fund was cut from $85,000 to $35,000. 

She said that government funding is essential and they suffer greatly without it.

"We're trying to save a language here," she said. "It's vitally important that it happens now, or it's not going to happen." 

Because of funding cuts, the school has had to reduce its hours to half days and reduce the number of teachers they hire.

Perley-Dutcher said it is hard to run the school without a permanent space. Though Kehkimin has use of the Killarney Lake Rotary Lodge and a nearby house, they are leased spaces for $1 a year.

Though she praised the city's generosity, she said that they have had difficulty securing funding for renovations to the house, which must be renovated before use, without ownership, 

She also said the cuts mean that the school now has just  six staff members making it hard to juggle the day-to-day operations, write funding applications, and provide safe, quality education for the students.

But Perley-Dutcher said she appreciates the funding that they still do receive because it allows them to continue.

"So, I am grateful for that. The city has been very generous to us." 

The City of Fredericton gave the school a three-year lease of Killarney Lodge for $1 per year, and a 10-year lease on a nearby house, which needs renovation before being used. Kekhimin is currently trying to raise funds for this renovation. 

Despite the difficulty of the work, Perley-Dutcher said that it has been tremendous for her.

"It's probably the hardest work I've done so far in my career. I get very little sleep. I put a lot into it and our team puts a lot into it," she said.

"It's good though. It's good for the soul. My healing has occurred … it's such a wonderful gift that I've been given to be able to do this work."