Why I am reclaiming my mother's language before it's too late

This First Person article is the experience of Rochelle Bragg who is of mixed Oji-Cree and Swiss-German descent. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. 

Read the column in Oji-Cree here. 

ᐊᔭᒥᐦᑐᐣ ᐃᐍ ᑎᐸᒋᒧᐘᓯᓇᐦᐃᑫᐏᐣ ᐊᓂᔑᓂᓂᒧᐏᓂᐠ ᐅᒪ᙮

A few years ago I noticed a little handbook in my mother's living room titled Pocket Oji-Cree. I started flipping through it and felt a deep longing. 

Anishininiimowin (Oji-Cree) is my mother's first language. My family's language is spoken in northern Ontario and parts of Manitoba. 

But other than the few words she spoke to me as a child — "niwiihsin" meaning eat," "ekwa nipan" for go to bed, "pishan" for come here — I was unable to understand it. So I borrowed the book with high hopes of learning on my own. 

Days, months and years passed, and the book sat patiently on my shelf, collecting dust. The necessity to speak Oji-Cree in my daily life was simply non-existent. I was not surrounded by family or friends that spoke it. Like many Indigenous languages, Oji-Cree is at risk of becoming lost.

The 2016 Census Aboriginal Community Portrait shows that only 16 per cent of Indigenous people in Canada speak an Indigenous language — a five per cent decline from 2006. 

Over the last century, Indigenous languages have been gradually slipping away. This knowledge has always weighed heavily on me. Then a couple months ago, I saw that Nishnawbe Aski Nation was offering a six-week course on Oji-Cree language lessons. The course was free and open to anyone interested. 

Until she was 11, my mother and her family lived a nomadic lifestyle moving between summer and winter camps in the bushes of northern Ontario. 

Then, the government displaced her community onto a reservation. Their lives completely changed. As a young girl, my mom experienced many hardships and left home to attend high school hundreds of miles away. 

Alone and afraid, she said learning in an English-language school was difficult. This challenge became too great and halfway through the school year, she dropped out and returned home to the reserve.

After marriage, my parents decided to live off the reserve. They said it was a difficult decision, but is common to many First Nations families pursuing education. My mother immersed herself in an English-speaking world. She worked hard, graduated high school, and later achieved her bachelor's and master's degrees. 

But in doing so, she traded away her traditional way of life.