Words Worth Saving: What Indigenous Language Revitalization Teaches us About Belonging

June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada. It is a time to honour the cultures, contributions, and resilience of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples – and to reflect, honestly, on the distance still to travel toward genuine reconciliation.

This year, we invite you into that reflection through a different door: the door of language. 

This article is inspired by the work of Zebedee Nungak, an Inuit writer, activist, and language advocate from Nunavik. Three of his recent pieces, written with the kind of clarity that only comes from lived truth, have crystallized something important – not just about language, but about what it means to build workplaces where people can truly belong. 

We share his insights with you now not as an academic exercise, but as an invitation to think differently about what inclusion actually requires of us. 

On the Question of Whose Languages Count 

In a recent commentary, Nungak writes about the remarkable tenure of Governor-General Mary Simon – the first Indigenous person to hold that office – and the public controversy over her not speaking French. A commentator, without apparent irony, noted that her successor was expected to be "bilingual." 

Nungak's response is pointed: Mary Simon is bilingual. She speaks Inuktitut and English. The assumption embedded in that remark – that bilingualism means French and English and nothing else – reveals something deeper than a language policy debate. It reveals which languages are counted in Canada and whose linguistic heritage is considered legitimate. 

In how many organizations do we celebrate bilingualism that means English and French, while remaining silent about the 41,675 Inuktitut speakers in Canada, the tens of thousands of Cree speakers, and the Ojibwe communities working to pass on a living language to the next generation? In how many workplaces do Indigenous employees experience their mother tongue as something to leave at the door – not because anyone has said so explicitly, but because the organizational culture has made the message unmistakably clear? 

Inclusion that does not extend to language is incomplete. And the cost of that incompleteness is borne entirely by the people whose languages we have decided do not count. 

On the Archeology of Words 

In a second commentary, Nungak describes the work of Avataq Cultural Institute in Nunavik – an organization he calls the only one conducting what he terms an "archeological dig for buried Inuktitut vocabulary." 

The image stopped me entirely. 

Since 1985, Avataq has sponsored 16 Inuktitut Terminology Workshops, compiling 10,419 Inuktitut words and terms that had stopped being used as traditional Inuit life intersected with broader Canadian society. These words were not deliberately abandoned. They simply fell out of use. They are stored now in spiral notebooks on library shelves in Montreal, waiting for the resources to transform them into textbooks, terminology handbooks, and instructional videos. 

Nungak writes: "Retrieving Inuktitut vocabulary is a wondrous process. These words were once in everyday usage among the oldest Inuit alive today... Finding, hearing, and learning the meaning of such words is like discovering items of great high value." 

Think about what this means. A language – a complete system of thought, of relationship, of knowing the world – has been partially buried. Not by geological time, but by the active and passive forces of colonization over a single human lifetime. And the work of saving it looks like archeology: careful, painstaking excavation of something precious that was never meant to disappear. 

A Feb. 2025 study in Royal Society Open Science models a decline of more than 90 per cent in 16 Indigenous languages in Canada by 2101 – within the lifetimes of children being born right now. And yet federal funding for Indigenous language revitalization fell by nearly 58 per cent in Budget 2025, even as 65,680 Canadians reported learning an Indigenous language as a second language – evidence that the desire to preserve and revitalize is alive and growing, even as the infrastructure lags behind. 

The archeology metaphor is useful for organizations, too. How much institutional knowledge, cultural wisdom, and human experience sits buried in your workplace – unasked about, uncelebrated, quietly archived – because the organizational culture was not designed to surface it? 

On a Vision Worth Holding 

In a third commentary, Nungak shares his vision for what he calls the "Mother of All Inuktitut Language Conferences," a gathering of every person who could contribute to saving Inuktitut from extinction: linguists, interpreters, translators, Bible translators, government language bureau staff, elders, and anyone else whose knowledge could accelerate the work. 

He describes this vision with both urgency and practicality. The urgency is real: "Language loss can be felt by everybody and is quickening by the day." The practicality is also real: the infrastructure – schools, structured instruction programs, teachers – does not yet exist. The Avataq Cultural Institute has taken on, as Nungak writes with characteristic dry wit, "this Mission: Impossible, as if it's just an entirely possible, ordinary matter of saving the Inuktitut language." 

That framing is remarkable. Not because it minimizes the challenge, but because it refuses to be paralyzed by it. The vision is clear. The gaps are named. The work begins anyway. 

How many of our organizations have identified the cultural and linguistic barriers that prevent Indigenous employees from fully belonging – but have not yet named a vision, gathered the right people, or begun the archeological work of understanding what has been lost? How many have the aspiration without the architecture? 

What This Means for Your Organization 

National Indigenous History Month is not a moment for organizations to perform allyship. It is a moment to ask honest questions – and then do something about the answers. 

Here are three questions worth sitting with: 

Not as a data collection exercise, but as a genuine act of curiosity and respect. Do your workplace systems, communications, and culture acknowledge that linguistic identity is part of human identity – and that for many Indigenous employees, their language carries knowledge, memory, and relationships that English or French alone cannot hold? 

Following Nungak's archeology metaphor: what Indigenous perspectives, ways of knowing, and forms of expertise are sitting in spiral notebooks on your organizational shelves – valued in theory, but not resourced, not developed, not brought into the centre of how decisions get made? 

TRC Call to Action 92 asks the corporate sector to commit to meaningful consultation, equitable access to jobs and education for management and staff on Indigenous histories and rights. Language is central to all three. Does your workplace offer Indigenous language learning opportunities? Do your supplier diversity commitments include Indigenous language-based organizations? Do your charitable giving and community investment strategies include language revitalization organizations?