Director's Message - February 2020

Photo by Nasuna Stuart-Ulin.

ELAN’s Communication Coordinator, Sufia Duez, is returning to us after being away for eight months of maternity leave. This is a milestone moment for ELAN. As for all fledgling arts organizations, staff turnover at ELAN was disturbingly high in the early years due to the short-term nature of salary subsidies for students and interns, and generally low salaries which meant that better offers were abundant and employees would leave as soon as they acquired enough experience for better paying positions. Thanks to recently acquired operating funding from the Canada Council, CALQ and the Montreal Arts Council (in addition to the Department of Canadian Heritage), ELAN can finally offer salaries and conditions that create stability. This is good for ELAN, its members, and our staff.

I sympathise with Sufia’s mixed feelings about returning to work because my son and his wife had a baby at the same time as Sufia last spring. It is difficult for a new parent to be apart from their infant who is becoming more alert, active and interesting every day. Happily, Canada has better parental support than many countries, and the arts community strives to be progressive in the working conditions we offer. ELAN will never pay salaries competitive with the corporate world, but we can be generous with flexibility, and responsive to family needs.

Guy Rodgers

Executive Director

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.