When Marie Rose Blackduck speaks Tlicho Yati, she feels a deep connection to her heritage.
“My language is my passion,” the Elder said from her home in Yellowknife. “I have a lot of good memories connected to it. It’s a huge part of my life.”
Blackduck, who is now in her 60s, was born near Behchoko, and was raised on the land. Tlicho Yati was her first language.
“My parents and grandparents and everybody else around me spoke the language,” she said. “We lived in a small camp, and they were all unilingual. Everybody spoke the language, and I was born into it.”
Blackduck began learning English around four or five years old. She said learning English was “a struggle” at first, but after attending residential school in Fort Smith, she gradually gained a strong command of the language.
In time, she spoke English so often that she admits that her ability to speak Tlicho Yati began to diminish.
“I did lose my language,” she said. “I didn’t speak it for maybe three, four years.
“When I came back [to my family], my mother, she spoke to me in a very caring way. I could see it in her expression, in her eyes, that she was a bit frustrated because I didn’t understand her and she didn’t understand me.”
Compelled to nurture her connection to her culture, Blackduck began to practice her first language again, and in time, achieved fluency in it.
“It’s a big part of my life,” she said. “I am proud to say that I can speak it, I can understand it, I can communicate in it.
“It’s who I am. It’s part of my ancestral roots. I cannot imagine life without my language — it’s something that I just cannot even comprehend.”
Blackduck loves to educate people about her language, and share it with other Tlicho people — whether they are fluent or not. Her most notable effort to that end is her job with CKLB, where she hosts 90-minute radio programs broadcasted almost entirely in her mother tongue.
“I do my best to convey everything in the language,” she said.
“I’d do everything [in Tlicho Yati] if I could — except the music,” she added with a laugh.
Outside of work, Blackduck said she knows many people who are able to communicate in Tlicho Yati at varying levels — including some young people.
“It grabs my attention [when I hear young people speak the language],” she said. “It’s like when a cat or a dog hears something interesting, and their ears perk up.
“[The young people are] proud that they can speak it, and they’re proud of the fact that somebody recognizes it.”
There are, of course, many Tlicho young people who don’t speak the language. Blackduck encourages those youths to take a stab at learning it.
“If you have a passion for the language, for Tlicho Yati, it’s not that difficult,” she said. “But if you don’t have the passion, and you don’t have the confidence to speak it, it can be hard to move forward and grow with the language.”
There is widespread concern that the North’s Indigenous languages are at risk of disappearing, as the Elders who speak those languages fluently pass away, and fewer and fewer young people make the effort to learn.
However, Blackduck has a more positive view of the situation — as long as her language continues to be spoken in schools.
“The concern of people my age and older people is that one day it will die out, but that will never happen,” she said. “It will never, ever die.”