The Sechelt Nation is hoping for a special present this Christmas - the long-awaited publication of their dictionary, outlining more than 27,000 She Shashishalhem words that would have been lost if not for the 40-year effort of elders and linguist Ron Beaumont.
Since 1970, Beaumont has been meeting with various elders of the Sechelt Nation to learn and catalogue words from their language, a language that was nearly lost after the abuse suffered in residential schools.
When the Sechelt Nation was forced into residential schools by the government in the early 1900s, they were forbidden to speak their language and punished with acts of violence when they were heard speaking in their native tongue.
Lenora Joe, director of education, culture and recreation with the Sechelt Indian Band, related an elder's story that told of the impact the residential school had on the Sechelt's language.
"She said to me, 'you know I'm an old lady, but even today when I speak my language I duck because I'm waiting for the nuns or the priest to hit me because I was hit so much as a child. I know it's stupid, I know they're not around, but I still think that,' she said, and that broke my heart," Joe recalled.
The residential school had a huge impact on the ability for the Sechelt First Nation to practice their traditions and speak their language until the school closed in the '70s.
Beaumont noted the years of punishment for speaking the language affected generations and is the reason why the She Shashishalhem language was nearly lost.
"This is the essence of the problem," he said. "What we have here is a gap. In the old days the language was passed naturally from one generation to the next at home. They spoke it all the time, so they didn't need to write it.
"Then there's a gap of one or two generations almost where people didn't want to teach their kids because they were scared to, and that makes it almost impossible to keep a language alive," Beaumont said.
When he first started to make a written record of the language back in 1970, he met with a group of about 30 elders who were known to be the last living people able to speak the Sechelt language.
"At that time we were very well aware that there were a lot of First Nations languages that were really in danger of extinction, and there was a kind of fascination at the thought of hearing the words and sentences of a language that was dying and hearing it from the mouths of the last speakers," Beaumont said.
He spent thousands of hours with various elders, hearing their stories, learning their language and definitions and transferring them to print for posterity.
That group of elders has now dwindled to only a handful who can carry on a conversation in the Sechelt language.
"If you go to the B.C. Aboriginal webpage, Sechelt is number three on the endangered list of losing their language," Joe said. "They say if you lose your language, you lose your culture, you lose your identity. What identifies who we are is our language, and if we lose that then we've lost our Nation. So we're really working hard to revive that in every capacity that we can."
The dictionary is hoped to spur that revival, but Joe notes the basics of the language have been taught by educators as it has been uncovered over the years.
"We've had the language in our schools for 30-plus years from preschool to Grade 12," Joe said.
But she notes learning it in school is not enough; it will take a total community commitment to revive a language near extinction.
"One of the major gaps that we have experienced is that the children are speaking language at school and they have nobody to come home and speak it to. Nobody's speaking it at their house, nobody's speaking it to them in the community, and so they were not retaining what they were taught," Joe said.
"So then our next step is how do we bring them to having a conversation but also bring community members in and other adults who are not speaking the language? And how can we make it a community program, not just a high school and elementary program?"
Joe hopes the new dictionary will help excite the Sechelt community, as they are able to get their hands on the language, physically see the words and learn their definitions.
Elder Theresa Jeffries is also hopeful the dictionary will keep the language alive long after the last fluent speaking elder has passed away.
"I'm happy that we have the dictionary. It will be there all the time and hopefully our children will start using the dictionary, learning to speak the language. Because we have a written word now, and hopefully these young people will follow it through and continue the language. They should be very, very proud of the fact that there is a language," Jeffries said.
Joe hopes to see the new dictionary printed by Christmas and she says that once the book is in the hands of the Sechelt Nation, a large celebration will be held.
"For us it's very sentimental. It's very close to our hearts," Joe said.
