As the Northwest Territories gets ready to review its Official Languages Act, some advocates say the legislation should do more to protect and promote aboriginal languages.
Later this year, the N.W.T.'s standing committee on government operations will start reviewing the act, which aims to ensure citizens can get government services the territory's 11 official languages: English, French, Chipewyan, Cree, Gwich'in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey, South Slavey and Tlicho.
"It deals with the right, in regard to those languages, when dealing with the legislative assembly of the Northwest Territories, and ... government departments and agencies," language commissioner Shannon Gullberg told
Over the past few months, the government has been hearing from language specialists and frontline government workers about what in the act is working, and what is not.
But Mary Rose Sundberg, an instructor with the Goyatiko Language Centre in Dettah, near Yellowknife, said past reviews of the act — including the most recent one in 2004 — have done little.
She said people still aren't getting government services in their native languages, even though those languages are deemed to be official.
"I wonder if they're just wasting money again," Sundberg said.
"The elders say they [government] can't just keep on collecting our information and shelving it, and not doing nothing about it."
Sundberg said she wants to know what happened with the 65 recommendations that came out of the 2004 review.
Gullberg said some of those recommendations have been implemented. For example, the Slavey language was broken up into two official languages: South Slavey and North Slavey.
She added that the Official Languages Act is just a guideline to follow, not an enforced policy.
Sundberg said she hopes the upcoming review will lead to more programs being created, to get young people excited about their traditional languages.