At 95, this community's last fluent Hän speaker hopes to pass on as much as he can

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In the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation in Yukon, Georgette McLeod is urgently learning more of the Hän language from 95-year-old Percy Henry, the last fluent speaker in their community.

"Percy is doing all that he can to share ... as much knowledge as he possibly can with us," said McLeod, the First Nation's language administrator and oral historian in Dawson City, Yukon.

"As quickly as he's sharing information with us, we're quickly trying to turn that around and share it with others," she told The Current's Matt Galloway.

McLeod started working with Henry in 2003, researching Indigenous place names on the First Nation's territory. Now, she documents their sessions on culture and identity, and shares them with other teachers and learners — including the classes she runs for children and adults.

"He is strongly connected to who he is, as a First Nations man. He's connected to his history," she said.

"He wants to be able to really pass on not only the language, but ... all of those teachings that go along with it."

The elder's patience and humour make the lessons enjoyable, McLeod said. But with his advancing years, she worries about how to preserve the language when he's gone.

"Once Percy is gone, what are we doing? So I have to think about what our contingency plan is. Like, what's the next step?" she said.

Residential schools blamed for loss of language

Canadian census data from 2016 to 2021 showed a 4.3 per cent decline, to 243,000 people, in the number of Indigenous people who could hold a conversation in an Indigenous language. (Data for 2021 recorded more than 70 Indigenous languages across more than 600 First Nations in the country, 50 Inuit communities and groups representing the Métis nationhood.)

However, over the same period, the number of Indigenous people who learned to speak an Indigenous language increased by seven per cent.

McLeod said that some Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in citizens are very knowledgeable in the Hän language, while others can understand it but can't speak it in response. She's among those who didn't learn Hän as a child, instead coming to it later as an adult.

The decline in Indigenous languages is a direct result of Canada's residential school system. More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend residential schools between the 1870s and 1990s. They were established by churches and the government to "take the Indian out of the child" — words attributed to Sir John A. Macdonald.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final 2015 report described the system as "cultural genocide" and makes several calls to action around protecting Indigenous languages.

Children forced into residential schools were "forbidden to speak their language, to be able to share their culture with each other," McLeod said, resulting in a "massive loss" of language between generations.

We have to pick up and carry this language on because if it's gone, it's gone forever.- Mskwaankwad Rice

Mskwaankwad Rice, an Anishinaabemowin adult learner who studies linguistics, said the thought of losing these languages forever feels "apocalyptic."

"[It's] the end of who we were before residential school, before we were taken from our land," said Rice, who is from Wasauksing First Nation, near Parry Sound, Ont.

"We have to pick up and carry this language on because if it's gone, it's gone forever."

'Emotional baggage' of learning language

Rice runs Eshki-Nishnaabemjig, a language immersion program, each summer in Ontario. He also hosts a podcast called The Language, which aims to help people feel a connection to other second-language learners.

As someone who didn't learn Anishinaabemowin as a child, Rice hopes he and other adult learners can now bridge the gap between generations and give their own children the opportunity to learn their Indigenous language as their first language.

"Kids need the language in the home and at school and everywhere they go ... but that's a pretty tall order at this point," he said.

Barriers are not just the time and effort needed, but some of the "emotional baggage" that's attached, Rice said.

"There is historical trauma there, and some people are not able to work on language yet because of damage that has been inflicted from residential school ... and various aspects of colonization," he said.

Rice remembers trying to speak Anishinaabemowin with his grandmother when he was first learning, which was an "unbalancing of the relationship we'd always known, speaking in English."

"I was very afraid of making mistakes. I was really shy and even for her as well, I think she could tell that it was hard for me to try and do that, so she didn't want to make me uncomfortable," he said.

After 10 years of study, Rice is conversationally fluent but nowhere near the level he'd like to be. He's currently focused on the words that are untranslatable into English — small words that are like the connective tissue of fluent Anishinaabemowin.

"The salt and pepper on the moose meat, as my buddy calls it," he said.

Learning on the land

Belinda Daniels, who is Nehiyaw from Sturgeon Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, grew up hearing her grandparents speak Nêhiyawêwin, or Cree, but was never expected to speak it back to them.

But Daniels, an assistant professor of Indigenous education with the University of Victoria, said "hearing the tone and the intonation and the rhythm" helped her to recognize Cree and decipher where one word ended and the next began.

She said she began to learn it as an adult in the early 2000s but "wasn't feeling like I was learning in an authentic, natural way," she told The Current.

That's when Daniels had a revelation.

She decided "I'm going to learn Nêhiyawêwin in my home community, in my home territories, on the land with Cree-speaking people," she said.

"It sounded like such a simple concept, but yet nobody was doing that or thinking just that, just yet in 2003."

What started as a personal project soon blossomed into inviting others to join her out on the land. Eighteen years later, she still runs annual intensive and immersive Cree-language summer camps in Saskatchewan.

Being on the land is a vital part of that learning, Daniels said. The language reflects the connections between the environment and our bodies, she said, offering an example, "The word for eye is miskisik, the word for sky is kisik, the word for day is kisikaw."

"When you're learning Cree in the context, you get that feeling of kinship and relationship to the environment that you're in," she said.

New learners a 'spark' for the future

Daniels said she's happy to see census data indicating an increase in Indigenous peoples learning their languages.

"Parents, young people are now wanting their children to come back home to the language and to have an opportunity to learn it, to speak it, to feel proud when they do so," she said.

Back in Yukon, Georgette McLeod also finds inspiration in the learners around her, especially those she hasn't directly taught.

"All of a sudden I hear somebody saying or greeting me in the language, and I'm like, 'Woah! I didn't even teach that person," she said.

"Even if they're not learning the language, just the fact that we're hearing the language — even in the smallest amount — gives us that spark and gives us that hope and helps to carry us through into the future."

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools or by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.