Halifax man honoured for efforts to preserve Indigenous languages

MikeParkhillis determined to help save Indigenous languages from disappearing.

And last week, he received a meritorious service medal from the Governor General for his efforts.

"It's more of a calling. It's not even a job," the Halifax mansaid Monday.

"It's something I couldn't turn off."

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Endangered languages

For many years, the Canadian government discouraged and suppressed the use of Indigenous languages.

Now, those languages arecelebrated as vaults of linguistic and cultural knowledge, but many have become endangered.

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Parkhill, who is not Indigenous, said he's been inspired to try to counteract this trend through hiscompany calledSayITFirst.

He'screatedbooks, TV showsand digital tools to inspire self-identity amongst Indigenous youth, andtoreverse the language loss in their communities.

'Onus is on all of us'

He even quit his job at Microsoft,where he worked for 16 years,to pursue his goal full time.

"It's thousands and thousands of years of knowledge,all baked into a languageand when the language goes, all that goes with them," Parkhill said.

"The onus is on all of us to fix it."

App helps with reading

One of the tools he uses is the free app Aurasma for storytelling in the other languages.

Readers can holdaniPad over books, and the app will registerthe title. An audio recording of an elder reading the book will beginto play.

This helps parents read with their kids in Maliseet, Mi'kmaq, Ojibwee or Cree, even if the parents themselves aren't fluent in the language.

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Connects families

One of the hardest parts about languages is pronunciation, Parkhill said, so the audio recording and phonetic spellings can help.

Also through his company, Parkhill helpscreate a children's television show to inspire youth to engage with theirlanguages. The shows areproduced by First Nations Education Initiativeand sponsored by Heritage Canada, andactors are recruited from local Indigenous communities.

Suicide prevention

Preserving languages is about more than words, Parkhillsaid.

In fact, a University of Victoria professortold CBC there are two decades of researchshowing the key to tackling suicides is rooted promotingIndigenous culture and values. The communities with the fewest cultural ties have the most suicides, the research showed.

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'I didn't have to suffer'

But when hegot word of the award, he wasn't as thrilled as might be expected.

"I don't like getting these in the sense that I didn't have to suffer and it's not my language," Parkhill said. "I grew up a white guy."

Despite not having a personal historical connection, he saideveryone will suffer if these languages die, and with them, an important part of Canada's heritage.