Indigenous languages hold millennia of unique place-based knowledge spanning ecological, spiritual, and relational domains. Yet the overwhelming majority of Indigenous languages across Canada face severe threats due to historical and ongoing processes of language devitalization.
Broken Promises and Historical Injustices
Neither Indigenous Peoples nor their governments have agreed to relinquish rights to their ancestral languages, whether through treaties, land claims, or negotiations. However, Canada actively drove the separation of Indigenous communities from their homelands, enforced linguicidal residential school policies, conducted forced sterilizations of Indigenous women—especially in Alberta—and removed Indigenous children from their families.
Each year, elders and fluent first-language speakers pass away, taking irreplaceable knowledge with them.
Data and Declining Vitality
Since 1991, Canada has tracked Indigenous language vitality. The last residential school closed in 1997 in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. Since 2016, statistics show a stark decline in fluent speakers alongside a surge in those wishing to learn Indigenous languages as second languages. Despite over a century of forced assimilation, Canada has not proportionally supported revitalization efforts.
Canada has failed its fiduciary duty to Indigenous Peoples, remaining complicit in the suppression of Indigenous languages. While English and French immersion programs are widespread, only a handful of K-12 Indigenous language immersion programs exist across any province or territory.
Legislative Steps and Unmet Goals
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released Calls to Action, with Calls 13-15 targeting Indigenous language and cultural revitalization. In response, Canada enacted the Indigenous Languages Act on June 21, 2019, establishing an Indigenous Languages Office and a commissioner to handle complaints regarding the act's implementation.
Two years later, Canada passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDA), which supports Indigenous sovereignty over language, education, and media. Coincidingly, the UN declared 2022-2032 the Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Despite these measures, no substantial progress has been made. A CBC article by Brittany Hobson and Alessia Passafiume highlighted misspending by the Indigenous Languages Office and limited responses from the commissioner. A federal audit revealed that the 2025 WAVES Indigenous language conference cost $10 million, and former languages commissioner Ron Ignace reportedly accumulated over a million dollars in travel points before retiring.
