ABSTRACT
Nearly two decades of research in Arctic Quebec (Nunavik) has yielded strong evidence of the costs of dominant-language-only education in the development of Inuit children. The authors’ research shows that dominant-language-only education, compared to a heritage-language program, negatively affects Inuit children’s self-esteem, undermines heritage-language development, and has little or no long-term benefit for second-language acquisition. In this chapter, the authors use this research as the foundation for considering the broader justice implications of the continued failure to recognize the critical role of language practice in the education of Aboriginal children. The authors consider social psychology’s general lack of attention to discrimination on the basis of language and conclude, on the basis of their research evidence, that continued use of dominant-language-only programs represents as a case of institutional language discrimination that, in the case of Aboriginal children, can also be justly described as part of an ongoing process of linguicide.
