51社区黑料

By Geoff Gilliard

Victor Guerin, a master鈥檚 student in Linguistics of a First Nations Language, has been awarded the 2020-21 Indigenous Graduate Entrance Scholarship (IGES). He is committed to revitalizing 丑蓹苍虚辩虚蓹尘颈苍虚蓹尘虚, the downriver dialect of the Halkomelem language spoken by the Musqueam people. There are fewer than 200 speakers of the Halkomelem language and only four proficient speakers of the Musqueam鈥檚 丑蓹苍虚辩虚蓹尘颈苍虚蓹尘虚 dialect.

鈥淚've been involved in revitalization of my language for some 30-plus years and my family's been politically involved for generations,鈥� says Guerin. 鈥淢y grandma was a political activist pressing for Indigenous rights.鈥�

Guerin, who will enter the PhD program in the fall 2020 semester, is documenting the knowledge passed on to him by Musqueam elders over the decades. Compiling source information in one place will arm the First Nation鈥檚 leadership with a foundation for pressing forward in its battle to re-establish Indigenous rights and title.

Guerin's path to learning linguistics at 51社区黑料began as a child when his mother, as band administrator, hired his late grand-uncle Arnold Guerin to run a language-instruction program at Musqueam. Arnold also taught Guerin about Musqueam performance, and encouraged him to give speeches.

Eventually, Guerin began presenting territorial welcomes for political groups, business and academic gatherings, and at environmental rallies.

鈥淭hen the idea came to me that I should look into the genesis of these territorial welcomes,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd what they come from is our pre-contact practice. Each community used paddle songs to identify themselves when they were approaching another village. That's the way they identified themselves as friends, rather than foes. And then the welcome song, of course, was used to welcome them.鈥�

But Guerin felt there was a missing component in the territorial welcome as it鈥檚 practiced today.

鈥淲e can take, for instance, the examples of Captain Vancouver and Simon Fraser in Musqueam territory. When Captain Vancouver arrived, everybody was congenial and our people went aboard his ships and traded with him. Conversely, when Simon Fraser came down the river named after him, he had stolen a canoe from one of our friends鈥� villages upriver and they'd gotten word down to Musqueam before he arrived that this had happened. When he arrived at Musqueam he was greeted by a flotilla of canoes, informed he was no longer welcome in this territory, and that he was to go back. So that's the component that鈥檚 missing from the territorial welcome as it's done today: the fact that our people in that time had authority to say, 鈥榥o, you're not welcome to come ashore鈥�. The basis of my PhD thesis is looking into the territorial welcomes and the legal authority that Indigenous people had in pre-contact time.鈥�

The IGES is awarded to students who have demonstrated academic excellence and outstanding achievement in their studies, with emphasis on intellectual ability, originality and ability in research.

Photo sourced from https://youtu.be/4QViR-E_wQI 漏 City of Vancouver.