New Brunswick Archives | Research & Innovation

Music Professor Dorothy de Val aims to preserve Gaelic songs

fmaquito — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

The Gaelic Song Project is 91��ɫ music Professor Dorothy de Val’s next project once her book on Lucy Broadwood, the English folk song collector, is published in May.

De Val is studying traditional Gaelic songs and aiming to foster an awareness of the language while also contributing to its preservation. A key part of this new project is research into prominent figures such as Frances Tolmie and Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, who collected hundreds of Gaelic songs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of them dating back to a much earlier period.

To assist her research, de Val has been studying Scots Gaelic since 2006, wryly noting how its grammatical structure and distinctive spelling and pronunciation make it challenging to learn. The number of those who are fluent in Gaelic are beginning to dwindle, though schools such as Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye and St. Anne’s Gaelic College in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, do much to promote the language and culture; de Val has studied at both.

The connection between Scotland and the Eastern Canadian provinces is of particular interest to de Val. These historical connections have also inspired a number of 91��ɫ’s music students to learn more about Gaelic culture, song and dance. De Val hopes to build the Music Department’s Celtic program by integrating various artistic practices in both studies and studio settings.

Currently, de Val is planning a research trip to the archives in Scotland and Halifax that house artifacts related to Gaelic culture. She is particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of visiting Tolmie and Kennedy-Fraser’s archives at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, where she will begin sifting through an extensive collection of field notes, film clips and other research-related artifacts.

Inspired by the work of contemporary Irish composer Michael McGlynn, de Val aims to combine research and practice in the Gaelic Song Project by including compositional and performance components. She will be using her creative skills to arrange selected songs for various combinations of harp and chorus. She also looks forward to working with her daughter Susanna McCleary, who plays the fiddle and sings in Gaelic, and singer Catherine-Ann MacPhee from Ottawa. Together they plan to make the music come alive.

Reprinted from the March 2011 issue of Fine Arts Research Newsletter, by Suzanne Jaeger, Fine Arts research officer, and Dan Vena, 91��ɫ theatre student

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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PhD student defends thesis in Mi'gmaw language, a 91��ɫ first

fmaquito — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:00:00 +0000

While researching the historical rights of his First Nation’s community of Listuguj in the Gespe’gewa’gig district of the Mi’gmaw on the southwest shore of the Gaspé peninsula for his doctoral thesis, 91��ɫ PhD candidate Alfred Metallic came to believe there was something missing in what he was doing – an integral piece of a larger picture.

Not much had been written about that part of the Gaspé Peninsula and northern New Brunswick, the seventh district of the Mi’gmaw Grand Council, until Metallic turned his eye to it, but that didn’t explain the feeling he had.

Above: Alfred Metallic, centre, defending his dissertation

It wasn’t until after he had written his comprehensive exams and was back in his community that he realized what was missing was the Mi’gmaw language – its connection to the spirit of the people, their ways of life and the land – and the way stories are presented back to the people, his people. Metallic’s dissertation was his story, and he needed to tell it using the oral traditions of his people in the Mi’gmaw language of his community and district, to share the knowledge and learning he’d accumulated, but also to help preserve his native language, which is at risk of disappearing.

“Our language, it’s how we maintain our relations and how we understand where we come from. It gives you access to your place in the world,” says Metallic. In the Mi’gmaw language, the action comes first, then the person. It’s the opposite with the English language.

Above: From left, Anders Sandberg, supervisor, Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES); Ravi de Costa, dean's representative, FES; Diane Mitchell, master's of environmental studies Mi'gmaw student in FES; Deborah Barndt, committee member, FES; Alfred Metallic, PhD candidate, FES; Ian Martin, internal examiner of the Department of English at Glendon.

91��ɫ environmental studies Professor Anders Sandberg, Metallic’s PhD supervisor, helped put the process in place with the support of Professor Barbara Rahder, dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) and FES Professors Robin Cavanagh, Mora Campbell, Stefan Kipfer and Peter Cole, among others. 91��ɫ became the first Canadian postsecondary institution to officially sanction the use of a language other than English or French in graduate work, and Metallic the first PhD candidate at 91��ɫ to defend his thesis in an Aboriginal language – it was written and spoken in the Mi’gmaw language.

“There’s a circle that needed to be expanded a bit by including others for a more holistic circle,” says Metallic. He says both Aboriginal and academic representatives needed to come together to form the circle. “That circle wouldn’t be complete until that story is defended in a way that includes all the knowledge-holders. We needed to expand the usual paradigm on how that knowledge is transferred and how that knowledge could be preserved. We needed to anchor it closer to where the people live, and that would give it added value.”

Left: Members of the Listuguj community join with members of the academic community at Alfred Metallic's PhD dissertation defence

It’s very hard to miscommunicate in the Mi’gmaw language, unlike English, he says. “One purpose of the circle is to reinstate the value of the relationships to make that circle tighter and stronger, so the people’s voices become clearer.”

And so in October, some 1,300 kilometres from Toronto, Metallic orally defended his dissertation in a ceremony that included a sweetgrass smudging, singing, a feast, a give away and the inclusion of the Aboriginal community as well as the academic one.

The external examiner Stephen Augustine, a Mi’gmaw and curator at the Museum of Civilization, was joined by Katherine Sorby, an elder from Listuguj; Keira Ladner, a Cree scholar and constitutional expert from the University of Manitoba; Leanne Simpson, an Nishnaabeg scholar from Trent University; Ian Martin, 91��ɫ internal examiner and language expert; Ravi de Costa, the dean’s representative and FES professor of Indigenous Peoples & Globalization; FES Professor Deborah Barndt; Sandberg and many members of the Mi’gmaw community.

Right: Community members, young and old, came to the dissertation defence

The community is still talking about it. “The idea was to strengthen the relationship between Aboriginals and the academic community,” says Metallic. “It is possible to co-exist, to have an environment where those different ways can co-exist without having to compete for voice.” For him the coming together of the people was just as important as the dissertation. “A lot of people at the table had an interest in how this would go.”

It is necessary, says Metallic, if bigger issues such as treaty rights and residential schools are to be resolved, that the First Nation’s more collaborative way of coming to an understanding be preserved. In addition, it is his belief that the Mi’gmaw need to tell a different story than the one of impact.

“Our history goes way back before the Europeans arrived.” There is a different story to tell and to do that “we have to trust our own people,” says Metallic. “Communities can work together; we can participate in these stories through the dissertation.”

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer. Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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History Professor Marcel Martel: RCMP had files on Canadians for or against bilingualism during 1960s and 1970s

fmaquito — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

What few people realize when looking at French and English language rights issues across the country is that the RCMP were instructed to open files on individuals and organizations both for and against bilingualism in the 1960s and 1970s, says 91��ɫ history Professor Marcel Martel, co-author of a new book.

“It raises some serious questions,” says Martel, who holds the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History. “What did they do with the information?”

Martel, along with co-author , a history professor at Laval University, cover 400 years of language issues in Canada – since the arrival of the first non-native – in their recently released book, . About half of it deals with the last 100 years, including the Quiet Revolution and the Official Language Act. Martel and Pâquet received a two-year Language Policy & Minority Rights grant from the Official Languages Issues in Canada Strategic Grants Program to research material for the book, which, at the moment, is only available in French.

“One of the reasons we wrote the book was to give a sense of where we’re coming from when we talk about language in Canada. It has characterized the way the country has developed since the arrival of the first non-native. This is not only about Quebec, the whole country has had to deal with this issue and it’s a very divisive issue,” says Martel. It’s reassuring to know that language issues have been with us for a long time, he says. They have not just appeared in the last 50 or so years.

But what surprised him was that the federal government felt it necessary for the RCMP to keep files on anyone involved in either side of the bilingualism debate during the 1960s and 1970s. The goal was to assess whether any one person or group constituted a national threat, to prevent social chaos and to ascertain if there were foreign spies behind the scenes, Martel says. But it was also part of a larger stalling tactic by the government to keep the status quo, as were the use of royal commissions and committees to study the issue.

Even today, the RCMP won’t release many of the documents from that time period saying they could constitute a security risk or jeopardize the conduct of international affairs or the defence of Canada, says Martel. When a document is released, most of it is usually blacked out.

Left: Marcel Martel

What the authors found, despite the government’s wish that the language issue would disappear, is that change was instigated not by MPs and other government officials, but by individuals. “It is people that forced government to deal with the issue,” says Martel. “The citizen, through demonstrations and petitions, has played a large role in the development of language policy in Canada.” The extent of that role surprised Martel.

He gives the example of Georges Forest, a Manitoba man in the mid-1970s who received a parking ticket or something similar, in English only. He was so mad he decided to challenge not the ticket itself, but the fact that it was not also in French. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court which .

Martel also outlines how French-speaking parents won the right to send their kids to French-speaking schools outside of Quebec, run by French-speaking administrators. In 1982, Section 23 of the Constitution came into existence, which guaranteed this right to parents no matter where in Canada they live.

The language rights issue, however, is still far from over, he says. This is clear by the latest struggle in Moncton, New Brunswick, over calls for store signs to be posted in both official languages. It will be an issue that continues to shape Canada well into the future.

In addition, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada has recently asked the federal court to intervene in the ongoing census debate, arguing that the long-term census form should remain because governments need the data on languages spoken at home.

Martel has already begun researching his next project, which will deal with the RCMP’s surveillance activities and operations regarding French-speaking groups, natives and African Canadians from about 1945 to 1984 when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was created and took over the surveillance and security intelligence job. He has already published a paper in the Canadian Historical Review in June 2009 that looks at the RCMP and hippies, titled '', which he says “will in part contribute to the growing literature on state repression.”

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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