Argument

Language is one of the bases of culture, not only for aboriginal communities but for occidental civilizations. Language could also be used as a weapon of destruction, rather as a reconciliatory tool, specifically for religious and traditional aspects (Figure 2). Antonio de Lorenzana (1769), a Mexican priest of the colonial period described the risks of translation for religious terms and the inconvenience of possible mistakes in his edict “Edicto para que los Indios hablen el castellano”. Just as Lorenzana explains not only this could happen for translations from native languages to European languages, but also vice-versa and this led to a loss of cultural terms. Some concepts did not exist in the native languages which led to gaps in the translation that could easily be used to twist concepts for personal benefit or misuse them. Even new scholars, like Young, J Alex (2023) in his article “You’re the one who talks”, have analyzed this matter, “Language defines us as people, our culture and our beliefs. Indigenous people use languages to disseminate teachings and ways of knowing that determine their worldviews and spirituality. Translation can often lead to misunderstandings as Western-European dominant languages do not offer a means of expressing what is important to Indigenous people. Indigenous stories can often be misconstrued in their function and reception through translation”.

One of the problems is that despite government efforts to implement indigenous languages there is little support for educational initiatives to implement those languages. Using the Voyant correlation tool in Figure 3 with the TRC report between language and words related to education like educational, educated, or graduated shows that there is a strong relation between language and the educational system, showing that language needs to be accompanied by educational reforms to preserve it. Even McIvor, Onowa, and Ball, Jessica (2019) in their article propose “an inaugural, countrywide, federally-funded, Indigenous-led language revitalization research project, entitled NE?OL?EW__("one mind-one people")”. This shows that education is important for language preservation and there are non-indigenous Canadians who are interested in these reforms.