 The Prairies to Woodlands Indigenous Language Revitalization Circle applied for a grant for a master apprentice program through the Aboriginal Languages Initiative of Heritage Canada. So our program is actually a pilot project where we have brought together fluent speakers, usually elders, with committed learners and they create teams where they work together to do one and one immersion in the community through everyday activities. Our program has a training component where these teams will come to a weekend workshop. There's actually three of them within this pilot project. We had one last September where we actually had 40 people come out. So that's in addition to the 10, 12 people that make up the teams. So we had six, actually five teams. And so we had 30 others come out to the workshop where they were also trained in master apprentice language learning techniques. And that's really what the workshop is to help the teams understand the framework of the program to learn immersion techniques that will be useful in a one-on-one immersion setting. And also, of course, learn some of the basics about the administration of the program, paperwork, and also basic language documentation recording of the elders so that they can use that for practice purposes and potentially in the future if the elders agree and the apprentice want to have those recordings archived for language revitalization purposes, curriculum development, etc., in the future. So the program is 300 hours. It's a pilot project. Usually master apprentice programs are three years long and they are between 900 to 1,000 hours. We have a pilot project. So our funding will go until the end of March 2019. And we had to wait to train our teams so that they understood how to do a master apprentice program. So that happened in September. So they've had six and a half months to put in 300 hours. The teams work together in the community. They decide on their own hours and they decide their own agenda, basically. They work together so that fluent speaker works with the motivated learner to plan out what language learning is going to happen. And this language learning will happen through everyday activities, cultural activities. And some of it will be somewhat scripted in the sense that say an apprentice wants to learn how to say give a prayer so that they would ahead of time work with the elder to develop the vocabulary, a list of vocabulary that they need. They'd learn that vocabulary. They may listen if there are any recordings of prayers and things like that. And then they would go through practicing how to do that. But it's all done through immersion. So English is not used at all. And no written language is used during the actual one-to-one sessions. The apprentices may use literacy as a support. They have a journal, so they may write things down in the journal. Maybe they'll even have word lists. But we're really encouraging recordings because what we want to create are fluent speakers. We want to create new speakers so people that can understand the language and can speak the language and can do that in a natural way and communicate in a natural way. And that's really the program in a nutshell. So it's learner driven. The learner really is the one who has to take responsibility for what really goes on for their learning and work with the elder. And the elder is encouraged and given, is actually empowered to help the learner so that the elders will learn skills in immersion. For example, something like TPR, Total Physical Response. So using actions and gestures to convey meaning and how to use that to teach language. They learn how to do things like something like the accelerated second language learning acquisition. I think I've got that wrong. But anyways, by Stephen Gray Morning using pictures, images in a structured way, so people will learn core vocabulary and then learn what kind of words collocate with that vocabulary. So for example, they might learn a woman, man, boy, girl, and they might learn some conveyances like a car or a bus or things like that. And they might learn some prepositions. So they would learn, first of all, just the words themselves. And our way is teaching only in sentences. It's a little bit different from that particular system. So we would teach them something as simple as that is a man, that is a woman, that is a car. And then go on to use a preposition with that and a photo so they can actually see it. So these would be pretty concrete things and they'd see it and then they would understand from seeing the photos. And in doing this, you're able to teach aspects of grammar without having to go through formal teaching of grammar points. So you're not going to have to use linguistics to teach that. And that's a really important point. So that's the kind of thing that happens. But it's as simple as doing your laundry together, going for a drive together, but it's all done in the language. And by allowing the apprentices to be immersed in language, they come to understand, they come to be able to speak naturally. And they actually sound much more like natural speakers than people that are taught in classrooms. So the other thing is it's relationship based. And that really is key because as Indigenous people, we're very focused on right relations and doing things in a good way. This is a high value for many of us, or all of us. And these people develop a relationship with each other so that elders work with a younger person. And through the language and through this relationship, they learn about how to express respect in the language. They learn how to actually relate. And some of that isn't simply through words. It can be through gestures, it can be actually where you position yourself in the room, who speaks first, just how you do things. And you can't really learn that in a classroom. It's very difficult to learn those kinds of things in a classroom. You have to be out in the world and engaging with people to learn that. So because many of our languages, it's very, for many of our languages, it's very difficult to find places where we can go to be immersed in it. It's not like, say, Japanese, where when I was young, when I was 16, I went to Japan as an exchange student, and I was immersed in the language there. We don't have those luxuries. We can't, like French, we can't go to Quebec and, you know, and what we can go to Quebec and learn French, but we can't go, say, and learn Machef. There's really no community, for example, to learn Machef. And in many communities, language is not spoken on a daily basis out in the community. You just don't hear it that much. So even with Ojibwe, or Cree, depending on where you live, certain communities, the language really isn't heard all that often. So you can't really just go to that community and expect that you're going to be able to be immersed. So we have to create these situations, somewhat artificial, but still relationship-based, to allow people to have an immersive experience. And that's really what we're trying to do with the program, is give people as much as possible an immersive experience. It's very demanding because it takes at least ten hours a week. So a lot of people have full-time jobs. Many of the people in our program are actually educators. They're teachers, as one is a principal and classroom teacher. They're a university instructor. There's also someone who teaches in the K-12 system and also at university. But they've all realized that there's really something missing, that the curriculum that's often used doesn't create speakers. And so that's why I really believe that they've gotten involved, that they really want to create new speakers and learn ways to do that. So most of the people in the program are actually working with family members, which is really good because it saves a lot of time in relationship building as such. And they can spend that time together. But the skills that they learn are actually, many of them are transferable also to the classroom. And so by being an apprentice or a master, depending, you know, if you're a teacher, you will learn skills that will enable you to enrich the K-12 or university environment because of understanding what it takes to do immersion and how to do that and also develop the confidence. And I guess in some cases really become brave enough, you know, to do that because it really does mean that you have to step out. You really have to step out. So it's a very simple program. Basically it's two people working together not using language, using gestures, actions, pictures, whatever they can to stay in the language and not using writing. It's been around for 25 years. It was developed by Indigenous people, four Indigenous people with support of a community-minded and ethical linguist. And this happened in California. And it's used around the world now. The Mohawk people have used it in Kamawake. There's a program happening right now at SFU that has aspects of master apprentice. They're actually doing an adult immersion program, which is fabulous. It's used at the Malassee people, Mi'kmaq people have used it. It's used all over B.C., all over California across the United States, even in Japan. I knew people were using it. And in Australia it's actually supported by the federal, you know, by their national government, actually supports this master apprentice, which is also known as mentor apprentice program. And it's proven to create speakers. And that's something that is quite amazing because we don't really see that for Indigenous languages. We see people able to, you know, to have a conversation, a basic conversation. But once they get out of their memorized, you know, phrases and scripts, people struggle. But with master apprentice, people know how to interact and speak. And that's really what it's all about is creating new speakers. That's a big question, Indigenous education and the importance of languages, Indigenous languages for Indigenous people. And I would add for all people in Canada. Indigenous education is not in my mind something that's really easy to define. It's not really, for me, it's not really both necessarily Indigenous education. Indigenous means to me that somehow we're taking a framework that is not Indigenous and kind of tinkering with it to make it more Indigenous friendly. So that really isn't what it is for me. Indigenous education, I think, comes from, it isn't something that has to come from a pedagogy that's based on the culture of the people that speak that language. So master apprentice, for example, is based on visiting. And there are some people that say visiting is the meaty way. And I'd say that visiting off it is the Indigenous way that you go when you visit with people and you develop those relationships first. And that's what I think Indigenous education really is about. It needs to be within a framework of creating respectful relationships, reciprocal relationships. And again, with master apprentice, for example, there's research that's been done recently that shows that there's a positive effect on the well-being of both the masters and the apprentices when they're involved in this program. So everything from dealing with isolation for elders, perhaps even more activities for, you know, they're getting out more. And the apprentices, for example, develop a stronger sense of self-identity and understanding of their place in the world. So language, I think, is really key to Indigenous education. Our languages also hold our worldviews and they are the framework in which we can express our worldviews and our relationships. It's not that we can't do these things in English. Of course, we can, but the categories in English language and the categories in Indigenous languages often don't match up. And sometimes there are concepts that just don't exist in non-Indigenous cultures or even other Indigenous cultures for that matter. So without having our languages, it is very difficult to express how we understand the world, what we believe to be true, how we know or come to know what is true. And then also without using our languages, the methods in which that we use to understand our world or come to understand their world change as well. So English is an imperfect vehicle for doing, for learning about our cultures really. I mean, in a perfect world, we'd be using our language to learn about our language, to learn about our culture, to do research, to teach and that it would inform every part of our educational endeavors. So without language, it's very, I think it's very difficult to get to the heart of who we are because of that, like I said, the problem with the categorization and that if you have things in different categories, for one, you know, you don't end up with the same relationships. And the other thing is that how things are related and how they work together is very different as well. Our languages, most Indigenous, not all, but many of our Indigenous languages like Achif and Kree and Ojibwe, actually are what they, I'll use a big word here, okay, so they're polysynthetic, I hate using words like that. But what it really means is that there's a bunch of pieces, small pieces of meaning that get stuck together in one word and are related in a particular way that one word can mean a sentence. And so when you understand that that is actually how our languages are, you know, when we want to express our worldview and we use English, which as a bunch of very separate words, it's not that we can't do the same thing, but there's many things that are expressed together and already expressed in relationship to each other. So it's those kinds of things. It's like not only the flesh, meaning the meaning of the words, but the bones of the language, the structure of the language itself is full of meaning and it's full of our cultural understandings. So I think that without having language being first, being central to Indigenous education, it's very difficult to bring back and sustain, reclaim these ways of knowing and being in the world. Again, I can't really speak to Indigenous education as a whole, but I look at language education. My hope and dream is that we would develop adult immersion programs first and foremost, where people would have between 3000 and 4000 hour contact hours in the language. So this would likely be at the post-secondary level. We know now researchers showing that that is really the most effective way to create new speakers, especially new speakers who can be creative in the language and use the language and not just wrote memorization. Part of that, the next I can see is master apprentice. Master apprentice can be part of say an adult immersion program, say the university level four-year program and adult immersion. But master apprentice is the use of master apprentice is extremely important because it allows us to address smaller languages that are critically endangered, where we don't have a critical mass, where there may be only a few speakers left. So master apprentice, the extended use of master apprentice at the university level for adults in particular. And the reason I keep on speaking about adults is that we need to create speakers that have the power to change things for our children. And we need that first and foremost. We're losing a lot of our fluent elders, and some of them are not well enough to say to go in and do language or teach in the K to 12 system. So we need to create these younger people that are able to carry the torch, so to speak. So we need to really focus on that. And there's a lot of youth that are really interested in wanting to learn, but they just don't have access to programs that would really support their learning in the most effective ways. So there are other programs that I can think of. We can have communication-based instruction, more classroom-based, that are still immersive, but maybe are not as intensive. But the time is now for languages. Really many of our languages are critically endangered. And if they aren't as a whole, like they often talk about, say, Cree and Ojibwe, that they may survive, but they may survive, but they're not going to survive and eat every community that they're spoken in. There are communities where those languages in that particular community is highly and critically endangered, it's almost non-existent. I know of a young woman, a Cree speaker who lives in Southern Saskatchewan, and she said that there are so few Cree speakers on her reserve that she really is learning her language on her own and trying to do kind of a master-apprentice approach, and she works in the daycare. But Cree as a whole is not endangered, but you look at that reserve, for example. And I look at our languages. I'm Métis, I'm a Machiff, and the Machiff language is critically endangered. We're at the point where if we don't work now, we don't, we may not have 10 years really. So I hope within 10 years we're going to see more programs that support the most critically endangered languages and bring them forward like Machiff. And there are other languages that are equally, you know, endangered. Maybe not so much in Meditoba where I live, but we need to start moving very quickly. So the next 10 years, yeah, but I'm really right now looking at the next year, two, three, four, five, because that's where we're at with, you know, with, at least with Machiff. But I think for all of our language, really it's adult language immersion, and if we get the adults speaking, then, you know, especially if you get young adults, then we've got people that are going to be able to speak to their children, right? So we're going to bring language back into the families, and that's where it belongs. Language revitalization has a place in education, but language belongs first and foremost in our families and in our communities. Education really has a supportive role. We've got the cart in front of the horse a little bit right now, you know, where education, a lot of language teaching and learning goes on within in institutions where it really needs to happen is in our families and, you know, out in our communities, we need to hear languages out in our communities. So that's something that we need to bring education out and have it bridged more between families and community members, and have that, you know, have the division to be more porous and have people engaged more, because without that, you know, we won't be able to speak to anyone. People can learn the language, but they leave university or they leave school and there's no place to go where you can speak. And that happened actually, you know, just to underline this, it happened in our, it happens in Ireland. They have immersion programs, you know, through, you know, through high school, and a middle woman in Saskatoon, an Irish woman, who came over, immigrated with her, with her spouse, and they both went through this immersion, immersion schooling. And she said that that was great, but there was no place to speak it. There's very few places, even in Ireland, where Galtaque, the area where Irish is spoken, it's very small. And there weren't even really community clubs or, or, you know, language tables or really anything like that where they could go. So she said they've lost their language. She's losing her language. Obviously she's over here now, but she said even in Ireland, because there weren't places in the community, because it wasn't being spoken in her family, she just learned it at school, and there were no places in the community to use it. So that's really, right now, why I think education, Indigenous language education needs to focus on adult learners, because these adult learners have the power to change things for their children. They have power to change things for their communities. These adult learners can, you know, some of them will be getting masters and PhDs, and they'll be well positioned to move this agenda forward. So although we do need to teach our kids, we need language-ness, you know, and we need immersion programs, real immersion programs, preferably not bilingual, but actual real immersion programs in the schools. But if we don't address the need for our new adult speakers, who's going to carry this on into the future? Because a lot of our fluent speakers are older, retiring, you know, and we have to address the succession planning now.