Director's Message: June 2017

When we are speaking of Quebec culture, does that include Anglos?

Awkward silence engulfed the room. What year was it? The incendiary 80s? Or the mid-90s leading up to the bruising second referendum? Actually, it was last week at a diversity conference.

I’m not sure why the man sitting next to me felt inspired to kick off the workshop by lobbing this question at the twenty unsuspecting people seated around the table. Those in the room old enough to remember Expo 67 reacted as if such a provocative question required advance notice and professional mediation, while those too young to have voted in the 1995 referendum were surprised that the question needed to be asked at all, and that it still had the power to shock. It was an important reminder of how much Quebec has changed in recent decades. The rest of the diversity conference focused on inclusion, open dialogue, and youth empowerment.

The incident evoked bitter-sweet feelings about one of ELAN’s first projects: RAEV (Recognizing Artists: Enfin Visibles!). The RAEV project was important for ELAN’s members in the early days when we constantly had to explain that languages are not mutually exclusive (or inherently hostile) because it is quite possible to use French as the public language and English as a creative language, and do both while being proud Quebeckers. Or that something is wrong when visible minorities, whose families have helped build Quebec for generations or even centuries, are frequently presumed to be recent arrivals.

These conversations are ongoing, but in 2017 they take place in new ways and new forms. So we are archiving the RAEV website. I invite you to take a few minutes to revisit the videos, essays, and profiles from 2011 and reflect on how things continue to evolve in 2017.

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.