Abstract:
All but three of the approximately 60 Indigenous languages still spoken in Canada are
under threat of extinction. This is due to the European colonists’ displacement of Indigenous
communities, later continued by Canadian governmental policies of cultural genocide. In order
for these languages to be saved from extinction, they must be revitalized. Many theoretical and
practical works on language revitalization have been produced, but conclusions of case study
research have largely been community-specific. In this research, a number of case studies of revitalization projects which are similar in setting to the Canadian situation are reviewed and
overarching themes which were key to the projects’ outcomes are identified. A number of
strategies are proposed which implement these themes in a revitalization approach for the
Canadian Indigenous context.
