‘Get a return on your investment’ grad tells her nation

Carissa Tom recently applied for a job in the Sliammon First Nation (SFN) community. Although invited for an interview, she was not successful. She then sat down and wrote a letter that addresses challenges faced by many people throughout the Nautsumawt Tribal Council communities. The lengthy letter appeared in SFN’s newsletter Neh Motl. Carissa also sent it to Klahowya. The following are excerpts.

Since it is likely that SFN has invested significant financial resources in its citizens who pursue post-secondary studies, it would be wise for SFN to hire those graduates so that we are able to see a return on this investment. It is important to note that not gaining a return on this kind of financial and resource investment is affecting the financial bottom line of SFN.

It was my hope that completing my education and developing myself professionally, that I would be able to make a meaningful contribution to SFN, while learning about my culture and traditions, while being able to provide for my young family at the same time.

More support needed

While SFN and its programs have supported me with my endeavors and educational goals, I feel that more support is needed for recent university graduates and youth who ‘lack experience’ in their field. SFN mentors our people through health, and education, with programs to initiate success and wellness, but subsequent support for SFN members is limited. Notably, by not making jobs available to our own SFN members because they ‘lack experience’.

Because of this practice, I believe we are missing out on the opportunity to build the capacity of our communities, and are, in fact, further fragmenting our society by forcing our young people to stay away for longer periods of time than is necessary to obtain a post-secondary education. I have spent the last several years working in Victoria because there were no jobs available in Sliammon.

We are wasting time, energy and resources on hiring outside of our community, including sensitivity and acculturation training. Naturally, non-SFN employees are more likely to leave Sliammon, which results in a high turnover rate of non-SFN staff, resulting in increased resources being expended to fill the vacant positions.

Mentoring members

I understand that sometimes it is not possible to fill all SFN positions with SFN members. However, I believe it is possible for SFN to develop a training/mentorship program for positions that cannot currently be filled by SFN members. My suggestion is that any regular position that is occupied by a non-SFN member should in fact be a term or contract position for a pre-determined length. During this period of contract/employment, the non-SFN worker would be required to mentor and train an SFN member for the position, with the expectation that the SFN ‘mentee’ will take over the regular position at the end of the term.

Values and Beliefs

As a youth, I have been taught and live by the traditional values of the Sliammon people, and our culture, and have worked hard both in and outside of my community to honor and live the traditional values of our people. While I hold these values very dear, it is more difficult for youth, who are at a disordered time in their lives, to hold strong in the beliefs and ways of the Sliammon people, especially when one is away attending school, and lacks the community support necessary to feel included and in touch with Sliammon values and traditions.

The First Peoples' Heritage, Language and Culture Council issued a report last spring that revealed the troubling state for native languages in BC’s First Nations.

But while the report’s findings were a cause for concern, there is also reason for celebration in some Nautsumawt Tribal Council (NmTC) communities.

Snaw-naw-as First Nation has just released a DVD called ‘Footprints of the Elders’ that will be celebrated by the community in late July.

In creating the touching and powerful film, Snaw-naw-as received help from one of the acknowledged leaders in language preservation, Stz’uminus First Nation.

“We were inspired by Willie Seymour’s DVDs on the Hul’qumi’num language,” Snaw-naw-as councillor Lawrence Mitchell said. “We were struggling to find ways to empower people to want to learn our language.”

The First Peoples’ Council provided funding and a Snaw-naw-as language revitalization working group was formed. Community members surveyed the community, interviewed Elders and made research road trips to the thriving language department at Stz’uminus.

“I watch it once or twice a week to inspire myself more,” Mitchell said of the film. “It clears my mind and I always understand more about our language and culture.”

The DVD was finished in February, taking two days working with professional filmmakers. The stars of the show are the Elders including three who are still fluent in the language and another who is knowledgeable.

The film includes extensive interviews with Jim Bob, Ann Bob, Dorothy Bob, Evelyn Louie, Bonnie Jones, Velma Page, Roseanna Lee, Vanessa Bob, Carla Page, Jake Bob and others.

Language alive at Stz’uminus

The resurgence of the Hul’qumi’num language at Stz’uminus began more that ten years ago with the building of the Nutsumaat Lelum daycare and pre-school centre. Thanks to leaders such as Charlotte Elliott (now a councillor and education manager), small children took words and phrases home to teach their parents.

Today, the original language is central throughout the Stz’uminus pre-school, primary and secondary schools. One of the main goals of Sulxwe:n Lelum (Chemainus Native College) is: “to facilitate the capacity of Hul’qumi’num people through embracement of Hul’qumi’num language and culture”.

Hul’qumi’num stories, songs, vocabulary and hands-on experiences with Elders and other community members play a central role in the education of people of all ages. The language is heard as students interact with carvers and help with cedar harvesting and weaving. Singers of all ages often perform at events at Stz’uminus and neighbouring communities.

Chief and council meetings often begin with mini-classes in the language.  Many of the more 100 employees of Stz’uminus, many of them non-native, are learning Hul’qumi’num words and phrases.

The language celebration later in July when a new book – Pulling for Stz’uminus: The Pearl Harris Story – will be launched at a Ladysmith bookstore. It features language teacher Harris and the story of the champion St. Andrews canoe club of the early 1980s. This fall it will become part of the curriculum at the college.

Report offers grim reading

The First Peoples’ Council report shows that fluent First Nations language speakers make up a small and shrinking minority of the population. A total of eight languages are classed as severely endangered and 22 others are nearly extinct.

The report shows that most fluent speakers are over 65 years old and that the majority of classroom teaching is insufficient to create enough new fluent speakers to revitalize languages.

Hul’qumi’num and the associated Halq’eméylem and hən’q’əmin’əm are classed as Severely Endangered with just 278 fluent speakers. SENĆOŦEN and the associated Malchosen, Lekwungen, Semiahmoo and T’Sou-ke are classed as Nearly Extinct with only 60 fluent speakers.

 

 

 

 

The council’s First Nations Language Map shows the following information about the state of language in NmTC nations. The first number after the Nation’s name is the registered population as of June 2010.