Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment for challenging each of us to celebrate the UN's Indigenous language's decade.
I came into this job with a love and appreciation of the power of language. I believe language to be a tool to see the world different at a time when we desperately need a new lens. But language is more than a lens.
Over the last two years, I have had the opportunity to meet many new people. When I reflect on some of the commonalities between the stories people have shared, language revitalization has been an unexpected common thread.
One person shared their journey through addiction. They lost relationships, home, connection to culture, and themselves. Regaining these was powerfully rooted in reclaiming their traditional language.
[Translation] Further down the road, I sat and listened to the connection between traditional language and pride. A man told me of a childhood where he would feel great shame and when his parents and grandparents would speak his traditional language in front of other people. Over time, he lost his language and reclaiming it help him connection struggling youth with their land and traditional and community. [Translation ends] experience of learning their language. Words didn't always come easy, the sound wasn't quite right, and sometimes the words came out as a stutter. Again, this story emerged from a conversation about selfacceptance and healing.
In and out of this role, I've learned language is not only a way for us to see the world. Language connects people to one another, culture, the land, and the work we do in this House. Language is pride, and language heals. Language and memory work together as a moral anchor that bring us back to our foundations. Language is worth learning even if we stumble and stutter along the way.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank our interpreters, especially Mary Rose Sundberg, and also both MLAs from Monfwi that I've had the opportunity to work with and who have both ensured traditional language is heard every day we stand in this House. Thank you.
Members' statements. Member for Frame Lake.
