SIX NATIONS OF THE GRAND RIVER, Ontario — Brian Maracle faced a daunting challenge when he returned to the Mohawk community near Toronto at the age of 45. He had no job and knew very few people there. But the biggest obstacle he faced was his lack of knowledge of Kanyen’keha, the Mohawk language. Decades of government attempts to eradicate Indigenous cultures had left Mr. Maracle and many others without their native languages.
Today, 30 years later, Mr. Maracle is a leading advocate for the Mohawk language and is helping to revive it and other Indigenous languages in Canada and beyond through innovative teaching methods.
“I never studied linguistics, don’t have any teacher training, my parents weren’t speakers,” he said in his office at an adult language school he founded about two decades ago in his community, the Six Nations of the Grand River territory, southwest of Toronto. Yet, linguistics…
2023-04-22 07:30:35
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