Reversing Language Shift in a Cree Community in Canada

Abstract

As a way of beginning the process of reversing language shift (RLS) and with the assistance of special provincial funding, community leaders, teachers, school board officials and a second language education specialist formed a community action research team to facilitate the creation and sustainability of a Cree Bilingual Program (CBP). The program began in 1999 with one cohort of children and expanded to four grade levels in 2003. Without a base of Cree learning resources or direct research to build upon, it was through trial an error that the team developed a number of successful strategies and their accompanying learning resources to help children develop listening, speaking, reading and writing in Cree. Annual testing of the children's Cree and English language development activated additional language reinforcement projects in the school and community. Annual interviews with administrators, teachers, parents, community members and the children offered a picture of the strengths and weaknesses, needs and successes of the project over the years. Observing a growth in the self esteem of children in the Cree Bilingual program, teachers, administrators and members of the community gained a resurgence of self-determination. This empowerment, through language, has lead to a number of creative projects and brought the community and school together in a positive way. The successes and challenges of sustainability of this initiative are presented in this paper.

Profile

Dr. Olenka Bilash is Professor of Second Language Education at the University of Alberta. She has served as teacher, consultant, supervisor, curriculum developer, and methodologist for various second language projects in Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa and Ukraine. She has worked with teachers of Arabic, Chinese, Chipewyan, Cree, Dene, English, Ewondo, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Italian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Polish, Sarcee, Spanish, and Ukrainian and has taught French, German, Ukrainian, Xhosa and ESL to primary, elementary, secondary and adult learners. Being multilingual and having worked on cross cultural teams around the world she is sensitive to the need to listen to the concerns of local communities in order to build capacity and sustainability. In 1999 she was awarded the Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Faculty of Education Undergraduate Teaching Award at the University of Alberta, Northern Alberta Heritage Language Association 20th Anniversary Award and an international research prize for her publication on teaching writing in second languages.

Working with a team of aboriginal instructors, she has also authored numerous handbooks for Alberta Education, was the conceptual designer for an award winning Blackfoot aboriginal language resource and received the Tribal Chiefs Association Award for her contribution to Developing Cree Language Materials. Being multilingual she has also developed and/or coordinated curricular materials in official, heritage and aboriginal languages.

Dr. Olenka Bilash has served as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), Coordinator of second languages and international education and Director of the Visiting Student Certificate Program. She is currently Director of the Hokkaido teachers of English Project (HTEP) and a member of a CIDA team in South Africa, working on issues of language, culture and teacher education in a context where there are eleven official languages. Previously, she was a member of the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary.

For more information, visit her website:

http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/cpin/edstaffweb/olenka/