Putting Knowledge Into Practice: Creating Spaces for Cree Immersion

Abstract

For Indigenous people in Canada, language loss has been great over the last century;o f some 50 languages, about half are either endangered or close to extinction (Depart­ment o f Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2002). With the rapid and radical losso f Indigenous languages worldwide, Indigenous people have been searching fo r effec­tive ways to reverse this trend and revitalize obsolescing languages through schooland community programs. Many have argued (Hinton & Hale, 2001) that it is onlythrough intensive enrichment education such as immersion programs that childrenwill gain sufficient language proficiency to reclaim their Indigenous language. In thisarticle, we describe the Cree Immersion Day Camp at the Canadian Indigenous Lan­guages and Literacy Institute and demonstrate how this immersion day camp ex­emplifies Fishman's (1990,1991) key aspects o f successful language revitalizationefforts: intergenerational links, ideological clarification, and the participation o f maxi­mally dedicated and ideologically oriented individuals. Efforts to embed Cree cultureand pedagogy in the day camp (Ermine, 1995) are also discussed.