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Summary

For over fifty years, Canada’s language regime has centered - in theory, policy, and practice - on a binary: linguistic duality and authority of the two settler colonial powers, English and French. The legislative enshrinement of status for these colonial languages, by way of the 1969 Official Languages Act, has on most accounts failed in multiple ways. As is well documented, legislated equality between French and English has rarely manifested itself in practice. Less attention - scholarly or political - has been paid to the Indigenous languages erased by both political discourse and public policy in Canada. What limited policy attention there has been has focused on Indigenous languages as second languages. The development of the Canadian Parliament’s Indigenous Languages Act, launched by the Government of Canada on December 5, 2016, attempted to fill this gap. Analysis of this process reveals the tensions within Canada’s established language regime, while putting into sharp relief the difficulties of policy and policymakers to attend to - and move beyond - Canada’s colonial past and framework.

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11 - Indigenous Reconciliation and the Limits of Canada’s Language Regime

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11 - Indigenous Reconciliation and the Limits of Canada’s Language Regime

Summary