The Road to Your Name Podcast

Road to Your Name | Special Episode: Live from the Six Nations Language Commission Symposium
Indigenous Language Day 2025
This episode was recorded March 31, 2025.  It is Part 2.

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Continuing this special on-location episode, Lisa takes the podcast to the Six Nations Language Commission's Indigenous Language Day symposium, where language keepers, teachers, and program coordinators from across Haudenosaunee territory gathered to mark Language Day and talk about what it takes to keep Kanien'kéha (the Mohawk language) alive and thriving.

Recorded live in the hallways and gathering spaces of the symposium, this episode features three conversations: a second year language immersion student, a fluent language teacher at a university, and a mature student returning to school to learn her traditional Cayuga language.

Across all three conversations, one theme keeps surfacing: language isn't just vocabulary. It's identity, healing, culture, and a way of seeing the world that survived residential schools and is being actively rebuilt, one word, one sentence and one conversation at a time.


WHAT WE TALK ABOUT

Conversation One: Immersion student learning with Katsyenhasehton (Tazline Mansell)

- Inspired by her cousin in the immersion program to apply herself.  She learned self-discipline and commitment to self.
- The immersion program fostered an environment of caring for one another and encouraging one another
- Being in the immersion program encouraged her to attend Longhouse and helped her to be in conversation with family members
- She encourages young people to begin by learning words as a starting point should they want to begin their language journey
- Katsyenhasehton shares a glimpse of her language skills
- Language focused excursions to aid in their language journey
- Her goals are to be in language retention as a teacher
- She's made a tutorial making a ribbon skirt all in Kanienke:ha
- Language is meant to bring us together 


Conversation Two:  Instructor at Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa and Professor of Linguistics at University of Toronto, Oherohskon (Ryan DeCaire)

- Bringing his daughter to the immersion class as he and his wife are raising her as a first language speaker
- His work in language revitalization at the University of Toronto
- His research reflects that immersion is the best way for adults to learn a language
- How the root word method and exposure to the language is the key to learning (2000 hours)
- How can A.I. assist in language retention (Canada Research Council).  It's a tool but won't solve our problems
- Starting our learning a language, you could take a night class.  There are benefits when you stick with it
- We all have a role to play in learning language and language retention
- Work to normalize the language in your community


Conversation Three: Immersion student in the Cayuga lanaguage, Gannowiyohsta' (Fran Henry)

- Retiring from work to study the Cayuga language in 2014 at Six Nations Polytechnic, graduating with a university degreee from the program in 2018
- Then returning to study language in 2023.  If you don't use it, you lose it.
- Using the language at meal time
- What drives her to continue to learn her language
- The language and the culture are interconnected
- She shares the reason she wanted to learn her traditional language
- What more we can be doing to inject language in our community
- Gannawiyouhsta' shares a story of a young man from Florida in his journey of language retention
- It's never too late to learn


GUESTS

An immersion student of Kanienke:ha at Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa

An immersion instructor at Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa and researcher in linguistics

A mature student of the Cayuga language


RESOURCES MENTIONED

- Six Nations Language Commission — host of the Indigenous Language Day symposium
- Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa — online and in-person Mohawk immersion program; Facebook page and website available for the first 40 words and more
- ETS (Everlasting Tree School)
- OLP (Ogwehoweh Language Program)
- BAOL (Bachelor of Arts in Ogwehoweh Languages)
- Ohén:ton Karíhwatéhkwen (the Thanksgiving Address)
- Aboriginal Legal Services — aboriginallegal.ca
- Support the show: click Donate at the top of the ALS homepage
- Facebook: Road to Your Name


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Road to Your Name is produced by Aboriginal Legal Services and hosted by Lisa VanEvery, Mohawk Nation, Wolf Clan. Recorded on Haudenosaunee territory with technical assistance from True Seed Media. Nia:wen for listening.