Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Good evening to each and every one of you.

[Witness spoke in Cree as follows:]

ᓃᑳᐣ ᓃᐢᑕ ᑭᑕᑕᒥᐢᑳᑎᓈᐚᐤ ᑲᐦᑭᔭᐤ ᐅᓵᒼ ᐃᑯᕽ ᐁᔭᑰᒪ ᐊᑐᐢᑭᔪᐣ ᒪᐢᑕᐦᐃ ᑮᑿᐩ ᐅᐦᒋ ᐚᐍᐢ ᐅᑕ ᐊᐚᓯᓴᐠ ᐅᐦᒋ ᓂᑫᑤᐣ᙮ Mᐊᐦᐃᐦᑲᐣ ᐱᒧᐦᑌᔪᐣ ᓂᓰᐦᑳᓱᐣ ᒪᐢᑿᒋᓯᕽ ᐅᐦᒋ

[Cree text translated as follows:]

First I would like to say, I shake all your hands because there is so much to this work especially in regards to children I would say. Wolf Walking is my name and I am from Little Bear Hills.

[English]

I bring you greetings in my language to acknowledge your excellencies and all the fellow panellists here and to be grateful for this opportunity for me.

I will state at the outset that I'm appearing on my own individual behalf. I don't have the mandate to speak for Ermineskin, Saddle Lake, Alexander, Sunchild, O'Chiese and Onion Lake First Nations in Alberta, who desire to express their own sovereignty and have indicated to me that I don't speak on their behalf. Hopefully, I'll speak perhaps more as a grandfather than anything else.

Thank you for that.

Also, as a prelude to my comments on proposed Bill C-91, as I said in my language, I want to express very sincere gratitude to each and every one of you for the work you're doing here.

At an earlier time, in an earlier life in the other place, as we used to call it, and when I had the great honour of giving my maiden speech in Cree in 1988 as a member of Parliament, things were very different. I won't go into all of the hoops I had to go through to do that, but I want to indicate how important language was and is, then and now, not only to identity and pride but also to spirituality, which is an essence of who we are.

I'm glad to see my brother Romeo here. He will remember that during the United Nations debates on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, when the articles came up on languages, I spoke for 10 minutes in Cree at the UN. You can imagine what the temperature of the room went up to. I asked people, “How did you feel when I spoke my language? Were you angry? Were you disturbed?”, because I could see the interpreters in their booths looking at each other and moving around. I did that for a purpose, because the point I was trying to make was that when our ancestors signed treaties, Treaty No. 6, you can imagine how they must have felt when they didn't understand the languages that were being used.

I want to do that again today by addressing Bill C-91 through a treaty lens, because there are some omissions in the bill from that perspective.

Another experience I draw on was the first international conference on indigenous languages, which was held in Japan in 2005. At that point, I spoke on an international legal framework for indigenous languages that was then in place.

I've also chaired some of the United Nations caucus meetings on indigenous languages. A couple of weeks ago, I guess almost a month ago now, I had the pleasure of presenting at the launch of the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

This is a really historic time, then, for this committee to be discussing such an important bill. At this time of the year, there are many reasons of importance. At the launch of the International Year of Indigenous Languages, I also referenced another part of my life, which was as a commissioner for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. For six and a half years, as I'm sure you all know, we went across the country, listening to former students. Survivors of residential schools shared their stories with us. Sometimes I would ask them, “What does reconciliation mean to you?” I remember one old man said, “Reconciliation, to me, means you give me my language back.” He paused, and then he said, “No. No. Reconciliation, for me, means give me half of my language back and I'll be very, very happy.”

I also want to share with you an opportunity I had on another occasion. I know that some of you have heard me say this before, but I ask each of you this question: Have you ever heard a language die? Have you ever heard a language die? One time, at a meeting at the United Nations, where we always offer an invocation and a prayer to begin our meetings, we asked an old man if he would be willing to say a prayer for us. He said, “I want you to listen very carefully. Listen to the sound of my voice. Listen to the words I'm going to use, because I am the last living person who speaks our language.” He went on to pray. About a month later, I got a phone call from a man who said, “Willie, the old man died.” I said, “What old man?” He said, “Do you remember the man who prayed for us at the UN? He died.”

I would not wish that experience on anyone. It was almost like somebody hit me right in the gut. I didn't know the man, but I heard his language, and I heard it die. That's how important this work is for me. It's because of the situation of our languages across the country. I heard survivors say, many times in anger and many times in tears, that they wished they could speak their language, but they couldn't; it was beaten out of them, they said, at residential school.

With that background, I look at Bill C-91 through the lens of a treaty. I have some comments I want to make in that regard.

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