 Hello, my name is Mona Sipas. I'm from Sumas. I reside in Skalkale. I'm a First Nations lady. For our next generation, I would like to see our language passed on as for myself. I did not, I was not a language speaker. My mother and father, my family was fluent and I had to go to school to learn my language and we had speakers when I went to school. I can't remember the year but I have been here at least 15 years to help teach the language and culture in our class here. And that I feel that that is the very root and the base for children to know who they are, their identity, and to take it along with them. I feel it's very important. I have a history myself of having to learn who I was and where I came from. And when I was able to do that for myself, then I started to grow as a human being, a person, and in the today's world I feel very strongly of the language, about the language, that language is culture and as I identify a person. So, our language is the Halkamelem language and it's almost lost the our elders who taught it, had a group and they were the Kokalitza elders. I am now a part of that group reviving and have been working with my granddaughter and other people who are interested in learning. My granddaughter is also a language teacher now and she's 21 or two. But when our elders taught the language here, they knew it, they were fluent, they had to learn to read and write. It was a new education for them. My mom did not read and write herself. She did everything orally and it was hard for her but I felt it was a good way to learn it orally. I can read and write it but not to perfection. I took a year of language through SFU and Fraser Valley College and worked with a linguistic and 12 of us went back to school to become language teachers and we're still out there. Some of us are, some have passed but I'm still here and sharing what I can with the children and I do as well at home and everywhere I go I'll share what I know. My granddaughter and my grandson's the children take language in school so when they are good at it we encourage them to continue and my granddaughter went right on to teaching and she's an awesome teacher but she's in school right now studying so it's kind of put on the back burner but she says she'll come back. She'll continue very hard. Yeah we have one fluent speaker that I know of that is really fluent. She's my mom's foster niece Elizabeth Phillips. Yeah she's my mom was raised with her family. Is she teaching as well? As much as she can and she learned to read and write and use the computer. Yeah that's terrific. She's a little bit younger than I but that's a good thing. Yeah yeah. We look at our elders book and we have out an elders siala class I think it's called they can right off the top of my head but there's only her and I can't think there's a couple more that are still alive and then we look at the whole group and they've all passed on it's an old generation so it's up to us to pick it up and continue with it as much as we can. Well at home I do use the language whenever I can and I'll use it to ask for something like I'll sleep a tea I need tea or I want tea and I'll sleep a piyapi or similar things I'll ask the kids and they're happy to go and do it for me because I know they understood me so it's a little tricks and songs I love the songs right now we're doing a bit of Christmas jingle bells and there's a lot of different Christmas songs that we do in Halkamala. Yes yes we learned to do Silent Night and when I was with my group we did Silent Night and we're invited to do it in a church while we went to the church and we sang Silent Night and we also added a few more songs we did an honor song and we did um Jingle Bells and they almost had to ask us to leave once we were there because we were drumming and we were honoring a teacher that we had from SFU it was very it was good that's wonderful that's not what we were invited to do so just Silent Night in many languages they did it and we did it in ours I was so proud to do that yeah yeah my mom's favorite song I guess the most important thing for me is respecting respecting each other respecting the environment and what you have and who you have it's like there's very little of it I find left from what I was raised with I know it's hard to see it disappear so and in the stories that we were taught or listened to there was always a lesson always a teaching behind the story so there's so many of them the one that sticks in my mind right now is the child snatcher and she she was in the story to warn children about dangers at night and dangers that could be out there if you're not at home or you belong and not doing what you should that something might happen to you and there's kind of a lot of scary stories but they seem to work when I was growing up and I'm sure they could be implemented implemented into today's out out in the streets and out in things that are going on and find it's a lot more than when I was growing up a lot more to worry about because I do it myself I worry a lot about my grandchildren and things out there the older children in the center we're working with zero to six and we're kind of limited to what we can really talk about but I do share when we're doing two time in the kitchen I'll share the foods with them they'll give me something they'll serve me or I'll say satisfy the co-op and that means pass me and they they listen the little teeny ones so then I tell them I named their foods in Halkameleum their fruits and then at playtime I'll name some of the animals and whatnot for them and yeah they learn that way they remember the spark is the eagle and the coyote they remember them and they do drumming and they sing the good morning and goodbye song with the drums so yeah they they take that with them and then when they go into the other the higher classes they continue they continue so we're building a little foundation for them here to take what they do so it's not new for them yeah for me I couldn't when I was growing up I couldn't do that I I could hear my parents speak sometime but when they knew we were listening they stopped talking or they moved or they asked us to leave because we weren't allowed to learn the language so that was one of the reasons that I was so so intent on learning it because it was lost and it was getting lost so we hear changing from what I used to hear you can there's a different dialect we'll never hear the old old old speakers again who just talk because they could and we do because we need to and keep it going it's just different it's written and it's recorded my daughter works at Kokalitza and they do much recording she's found recordings of all our elders our old elders speaking and dancing and singing and she found a recording of my mom in court who would only speak kaka male I'm fighting for our fish and and she did it in her language so it was powerful the importance of it how the importance of your language I probably couldn't couldn't say that enough because it's culture and who you are and I don't we have teachers the language has been taught in university college and it's very very important to us to have it continued I don't know how to stress that enough just even when you have got to where we were from residential school not being able to speak it and wanting so bad to learn I always remember wanting to learn the language but not being able to that we asked our mother how do you say this mom and she'd say like shukwa or something my dad would get mad at her and say don't do that so it it's a need it's a need and I envy like we were down Vancouver and the Chinese people were talking and the kids were talking and everybody was talking their language and you kind of envy it because they do have it they've never had to lose it it's just really hard to understand why you know I know it was assimilation and that and now you feel why why it was done to us but it's quite painful and I don't like to point fingers and blame anybody for it because whoever did it this they knew what they were doing they knew how to to do that and the people didn't understand they didn't really probably not understand how important some did they kept it going in different areas but some were too afraid to have they didn't understand how important it would be for us to grow up having that knowledge of our language to cherish and yeah so it's really kind of hard to explain but you feel it you don't realize and then when you say culture people think of beads and feathers and all that stuff and to me that's not my culture no it's my environment the river the mountains just the surrounding stuff that I feel when you're going to you feel it a sense of belonging so it's just I guess unless you've lost it and you try to get it back then then you know I guess yeah well if it's to do with the language I hope it will keep growing I hope before I leave this world I'll see a movie in our language that's my dream Bambi I don't know why Bambi I've seen another languages I've written a Christmas story and it's in Hulkamellum it's uh I don't see it getting published that wasn't the idea I wrote it just for teaching and it's um it's the sea little cedar tree who wants to be a Christmas tree and he's out in the yard looking into the window at a decorated tree and he really wants to be a tree his name's Seek little cedar and he is looking in he or she and and looking at that tree I want to be a Christmas tree and then he's told by a grandpa tree that that's not his job he's a medicine tree and he's already decorated with snow and birds in his tree it's I can't exactly I wrote it a long time ago and my granddaughter is reviving it it's in Hulkamellum I wrote it for school but things like that it's a learning to be happy with who you are and that you're important just the way you are because our cedars used for so much but it's a cute little story that's all in Hulkamellum to be happy with what you have and who you are is the moral of it my granddaughter shared it last year with her class little things like that they really mean a lot to kids we're not always happy about who we are and what we have and we have so much to be grateful for