Peter Weasel Moccasin, a Blackfoot elder, chats with a student at the Long Night Against Procrastination in Lethbridge College’s Buchanan Library on Nov. 5, 2019.

The Blackfoot language has been spoken for thousands of years, but decades of repression by government residential schools nearly extinguished it. It is a language once spoken by nations in present-day Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana. Today, there are only around 5,000 people who speak Blackfoot to some extent and it is considered endangered, according to the University of Montana.

“Without the language, there’s no culture. Language is what brings the culture to us and the language has been spoken for – they’re saying 15,000 years,” said Peter Weasel Moccasin, Lethbridge College’s Kainai Kaahsinnoonik, or grandfather.

The Kainai are one of three First Nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy, many of whom live on reserves on Treaty 7 land in southern Alberta.

The Canadian government’s residential school system began in the late 19th century and lasted well into the 20th century, with the last one closing in 1996 in Saskatchewan.

“It essentially undermined our education system and our language system by discrediting it and basically, our ways were looked at as inferior,” said Lowell Yellowhorn, Indigenous services coordinator for Lethbridge College.

Weasel Moccasin lived through the residential school system, where he was told not to speak his native tongue.

“When we spoke the language, they made us feel ashamed of it – embarrassed us, humiliated us, for speaking the language – made fun of us, put us down,” said the Blackfoot Elder.

He was told only to speak English, but as a child resisted and faced discipline, as well as missing out on his education.

 “I did not get educated because I didn’t want to learn English. We were considered a person who cannot be educated. It didn’t change me. I still have my language,” he said.

Efforts are underway to keep the Blackfoot language alive and spoken. Lethbridge College offers two Blackfoot classes for credit, which can be taken online or in person throughout the year. In addition to the two courses, the college has been bestowed a Blackfoot name because of the work it does with indigenous people across southern Alberta. Weasel Moccasin gave the college the name Ohkotoki’aahkkoiyiiniimaan, or stone pipe, because stone pipes were often used in ceremonies devoted to Iihtsipaatapi’op, the Source of Life.

The 2016 Canadian census found 5,565 people who speak Blackfoot to some degree, most of whom reside in Alberta. It is difficult to say how many fluent speakers there are because the census question did not specify the level of competency.

Blackfoot language and cultural programs are available to students from kindergarten to grade 12 in Alberta, according to the Alberta Education website.

According to Yellowhorn, there is a lot of work to be done to repair the damage done to First Nations’ cultures during the residential school era, but things are moving in the right direction.

“It’s a slow transformation right now, but reconciliation is in the forefront of everything nowadays and if an organization or institute isn’t indigenizing, then, I don’t know if I want to be associated with that institution,” said Yellowhorn.

The future of the language is uncertain, but the people who speak it and teach it seem optimistic about its survival.

“It was wrong, what they did. Because [it] affected a generation. Now they want to learn the language, and this is good… Now they can write it,” said Weasel Moccasin.