Centuries ago, the music of the Híɫzaqv language echoed across a territory of deep fjords, rugged islands, windswept beaches and thick forests.
And then, for more than a century, the lands now in the western reaches of Canada fell quiet.
Wars with neighbouring nations, disease and violent assimilation by colonial governments brought the people and their language to the brink of extinction. The once-thriving population plunged from more than 40,000 to less than 200 people.
Today, nearly 4,000 live in the region. But only seven fluent speakers remain.
“Híɫzaqv is a deeply relational and nuanced language. It teaches us so much about how to relate to each other. It teaches us to relate to the land. It speaks to an entire context [of] how to exist in our homelands,” said Jess H̓áust̓i, a poet and member of the Heiltsuk Nation (Haíɫzaqv). “If that is lost, we no longer have our guiding signpost. The loss would be profound.”
The Heiltsuk’s experience of witnessing the collapse of their language has left them grappling with a profound and complex grief. And yet in the coastal community, nestled against the mountains, there is a buoyant sense of hope.
Before the creation of what is now Canada on more than 3.8m sq miles of North America, 58 distinct Indigenous languages were spoken throughout the lands.
Decades of hostile government policies, including the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families, and a system of residential schools that attempted to kill off the culture of Indigenous peoples, stripped many of their language.
Today, Cree, Anishinaabemowin and Inuktitut still have a relatively large number of speakers, but other tongues are on the brink of extinction: sháshíshálh (the Sechelt language) has just two native speakers. On the archipelago of Haida Gwaii, the youngest native speaker of X̱aat Kíl is in her 70s.
Sol Mamakwa, a member of the legislative assembly of Ontario, attended residential school in his youth and was punished for speaking his mother tongue in school, a language that captured his people’s intimate relationship with the lands, the animals and seasons.
“That’s where you learn the language. Along the banks of the river, your parents teaching out the names [of] fish, or plants and the history of those names. You don’t learn it in the four walls of a classroom.”
Last year, he became the first provincial lawmaker to stand in the cavernous legislature in Toronto and give a speech in Anishininiimowin. More than 100 guests attended, many of them flown in from the scattering of geographically remote communities he represents.
“For community leaders who were there, it was very emotional for them. They had tears in their eyes – not because of what I said but because they were hearing their language in a place where it was never supposed to be spoken,” he said.
The colonial apparatus that tore children from their families and sought to kill off culture and language has been gradually dismantled over the years. But Mamakwa, who has experienced the gradual erosion of his own fluency while living in Toronto, has focused his attention on the remaining systems that erode the ability to speak the first languages of the land.
Of the 31 municipalities he represents, 24 are fly-in communities. Because not all of them have high schools, students are moved hundreds of kilometres away to larger cities to complete their studies.
“They’re brought away from their families, away from their land, and away from hunting and fishing,” said Mamakwa. “And so the loss continues on. It takes different forms. But it continues.”
In Bella Bella, the largest community in the territory of the Heiltsuk, efforts to halt the attrition of fluent speakers have taken on a renewed intensity. The motivation comes both as fluent speakers die – and the culture experiences a deep and transformative revival.
For H̓áust̓i, Híɫzaqv was the soundtrack to every interaction on the land.
“It was the background to being out on the boat, harvesting, berries, picking seaweed, and processing that food, together, as a family,” they said. “I’m still in really early stages of my own learning journey to reconnect with the language, but I can still hear the music, their words, I can hear the depth of feeling they had.”
H̓áust̓i is a member of the first generation in which no family was taken away to residential school.
“Culture is being normalized for kids in a much deeper way now than it ever was before,” said H̓áust̓i, who remembers potlatch ceremonies held in school gyms.
“Now, kids don’t know anything but to see the potlatch [in] our Big House. It gives me so much joy and hope that there are kids growing up who have no concept that it was ever different, that our culture was ever at the margins. They’re growing up only with the knowledge that in this moment, it’s in the center.”
New resources have been poured into preservation and education, including compiling vast troves of information from the current fluent speakers.
Social media is having a transformative effect, stemming losses and in some cases reversing declines. A recent feature in the Walrus magazine points to the success of the Squamish people to preserve Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim. In 2010, there were only 10 fluent speakers. But the effects of immersion programs for adults, infants and toddlers, as well as online lessons have led to more than 100 people being able to speak the language.
“You never want to lose the body of knowledge and language that you had as a people. But our language is also growing. There are words emerging and concepts emerging that are being captured in our language, that are new, to reflect the new reality we live in, and the new way that we live and work and be together,” said H̓áust̓i. “Language is not monolithic. It’s something that’s always evolving.”
That evolution, combined with efforts to catalogue and preserve the accrued knowledge of the region’s remaining fluent speakers, has left the Heiltsuk with a set of tools and resources that might not have been available decades ago.
“It’s hard and terrifying to lose fluent speakers. And yet I just have so much hope that there are so many new speakers who are taking up that work in a really deep, meaningful way. They’re making it their life’s work. The language will change. It’s changing now. But there will always be people carrying it,” said H̓áust̓i.
“Because of the community’s efforts, there are babies today whose first words, the first sounds they experience, are Híɫzaqv. That’s something beautiful and worth fighting for.”
