Friday 17 November 2000

Larose opposes Indian ghettos

Province has a duty to promote aboriginal languages: estates chief
ELIZABETH THOMPSON
The Gazette

The Quebec government has a responsibility to help protect and promote aboriginal languages, estates-general chairman Gerald Larose said yesterday.

"The state has a responsibility to protect and increase the standing of that wealth," Larose said. "We have to work with them; we shouldn't do it for them, but we should look at an linguistic planning policy which will have the result of valorizing their languages."

He was in Sept-Iles to head public hearings on the future of the French language in Quebec.

Aboriginal communities have been more successful in keeping their languages alive in Quebec than in many other places, Larose said.

"Here in Sept-Iles, 80 per cent of the Montagnais population speaks Montagnais. I find that extraordinary.

"Cree is a language that is spoken more and more. Inuit also."

Other languages aren't doing as well, like Mohawk, which Larose said has almost been eliminated by English.

The government should also help ensure aboriginal peoples are not ghettoized in a province where the common language is French, he added.

Larose said the French Language Charter, Bill 101, is silent on the place of aboriginal languages in Quebec and it is an area in which the commission plans to submit recommendations. Larose refused, however, to wade into the thorny territory of whether Bill 101 should apply on reserves.

Larose's comments came after a presentation by Sept-Iles lawyer Robert Lemieux, who was defence counsel for members of the terrorist Front de Liberation du Quebec who took part in the 1970 October Crisis.

Yesterday, Lemieux defended the place of English and aboriginal languages in Quebec, pointing out that the best-known performing artists from the Sept-Iles area are the members of the Montagnais singing group Kashtin, and court cases in Sept-Iles are often conducted in Montagnais.

After presenting a long, sometimes rambling account of English domination in Quebec, Lemieux said he would like to francophones, anglophones and aboriginal peoples to work together to achieve Quebec independence.

Viateur Beaupre, a retired teacher, called for an improvement of French in Quebec, saying "bilingualism is the first stop on the way to the slaughterhouse."

Marcel Cormier, another retired teacher, criticized the quality of French in popular music, questioning why songs with poor-quality French win awards.

Yesterday, as the estates-general ended their third week of regional hearings, commissioners found themselves before the smallest turnout yet.

The estates-general opened in Quebec City to audiences of up to 50 people, but the turnouts declined to fewer than 20 last week and fewer than a dozen this week.

Yesterday, only three people presented briefs. There were nine people in the audience in the afternoon and seven in the evening.

Media coverage has also been dwindling. In Quebec City, the estates received extensive coverage on radio, television and in newspapers. That became mostly newspapers last week. This week, most daily French newspapers all but ignored the hearings.

Larose said he is not concerned about the apparent lack of interest, saying the quality of briefs "are worth the trip" and it isn't the commission's job to "mobilize" Quebecers.

Moreover, that lack of mobilization and politicization helps more than hinders, because it gives the commission more freedom to explore unorthodox or creative solutions, he said.

"It is better to discuss language in these conditions, when there is no political effervescence," Larose said.

"We can discuss things more freely."