Kathleen Lippa
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 17/03) - Betty Harnum was intrigued by languages at a young age.

Her friends spoke German, so she listened and learned.

She later took French, so job opportunities would be better. She studied Latin because she wanted to be a doctor. And in university she studied linguistics.

Betty Harnum holds a copy of "One Land Many Voices," the proposed bill for the Official Languages Act that took two years of consultations. Harnum says she is "impressed" with the bill. - Kathleen Lippa/NNSL photo

When Harnum moved to the NWT in 1974 after completing her degree, she learned native languages, including Inuktitut.

In 1992, Harnum became NWT's first language commissioner.

Now she watches with a knowing eye as the Official Languages Act, one that she originally helped draft years ago, is being revamped for consideration at the legislative assembly in June.

"They've gotten the message," said Harnum of the proposed legislation.

But she added, "some things they've recommended were in place but had been dismantled."

The new act proposes having a minister responsible for languages.

"It used to be the premier," she said, noting she pushed for that when she was language commissioner. "They're the only one who can tell the other departments to report to them."

With 11 official languages in the NWT, protecting them now is an uphill battle, Harnum said.

"You can't do the things you do for English and French for aboriginal languages," she said.

"When you look at everything that needs to be done, it boils down to who's going to do it? And whenever I work with people talking about language planning, first thing I tell them to do is put the names down on paper.

"Who's going to do the work? Start there."

"Official languages are much more than teaching kids language in school," said Harnum. "(People) only think education. There are many important provisions."

When the act was amended in 1995, Harnum said, the GNWT took out the provision that said children have a right to their own language. Now it has gone back to recognizing the rights people have to speak their native tongue.

"There's a section in the act about equality," she said quietly while sitting in the Prince of Wales Heritage Museum recently. "Equality doesn't mean treating everybody the same. Put a baby, an old person in a wheelchair and a healthy young person in front of a flight of stairs. That's the same treatment. Tell them to go up. That's not fair. Equality is not about same treatment, it's about fair treatment. Taking away obstacles so that everybody has the same opportunity."

Embracing languages

Mick Mallon moved North in 1959 and has also lived a life embraced by languages.

Originally from Ireland, Mallon has seen firsthand unsuccessful attempts to save the language of Gaelic.

Today, Mallon, who lives in Iqaluit, equates fighting for a language like fighting on the battlefield. The situation for Northern languages is "desperate," Mallon said.

"A government can destroy a language," he said. "A government can't save a language. The first place to save a language is in the home."

Harnum, however believes the government is on the right track with the revised act.

"Equality is always a dream," she said. "And you're always reaching for it. But you never really achieve it. Equality is a process. It never stops. That's why this act is really important.

"A lot of these languages are lost because of dominant cultures coming in and not respecting. It's not what people wanted. So for people to say, 'Well, these languages are going to die anyway,' well, just a moment.

"There's some remedy required here because they were speaking their language, they were passing it on."

"The language dies from the children up," Mallon said recently.

In a world where English dominates, "Parents will deliberately not use the native language," said Mallon, "thinking they are doing them a favour. To me it seems incredible that a family that one generation ago spoke their own language at home, a generation later they don't and it happens so quickly.

"Can a government help? Yes," Mallon added. "And it should."

After a life immersed in Northern culture, Mallon, who writes the Arctic Bookshelf column for News/North, explained what understanding Inuktitut is like.

"It's a fascinating language," he said. "It's so much more logical than English."

Harnum had similar comments. She is literate in Inuktitut and teaches a Dogrib class. She loves the Dogrib word for "pants" that translated means "bum cloth," or "comb" that translated means "through the head."

Mallon delights that the word for "computer" in Inuktitut is based on the word for brain. The word for "car" in Igloolik dialect is "an instrument for crossing the land."

"The one I really like is the word for helicopter -- translated it's 'That which has something going through the space above itself," he said laughing. "It's another way of looking at reality. When you study a language different than your own, it just opens up the world in another way."