On April 30, the First Peoples’ Council has released a report on the status of British Colombia’s native peoples linguistic and cultural heritage.

60% of Canada’s native languages are spoken in B.C.. Some of them even belong to language families that exist nowhere else in the world.

This first report provides very substantial information on these languages, as well as alerts on their future and suggests what needs to be done to save them.

Conceding the several possible ways of measuring the threat bearing upon these languages, the report appoints a guideline based on: speakers (number, age, percentage on speakers of an endangered language), use (where and how a language is spoken and taught), and available material on a given language (amount of documents, recordings, analysis, archives…)

The document reveals that fluent speakers of these languages are nowadays over 65 years old, and that the educational system’s will to raise new speakers proves to be insufficient to enable actual revitalizations.

The conclusions of this report are indisputable: the native languages of British Colombia are in critical state as we speak. The First Peoples’ Council calls for an immediate response, failure of which would jeopardise the very existence of these languages in the future.

For more information: http://www.fphlcc.ca/