Wikimedia Canada/aboriginal

Encourage creation of Aboriginal Wikipedias/Encourager la création de Wikipédias autochtones

(English) Only Cree and Inukitut Wikipedias exist, and major Native languages like Iroquois and Athabaskan are unrepresented. Wikipedia could strive to help the preservation of these languages, so they don't meet the same fate as other such languages.
(French) En ce qui concerne les langues autochtones, il n'existe que des Wikipédias en cri et inuktitut ; des langues autochtones importantes, dont l'iroquois et l'athapascan, ne sont pas représentées. Wikipédia pourrait tâcher d'aider à la préservation de ces langues pour qu'elles ne finissent pas comme d'autres langues du même ordre.

Discussion

Il est à noter que l'Athapascan n'est pas une langue, mais bien une famille de langues. Au Yukon, on compte sept ou huit langues athapascanes, quatre sont officielles aux TNO, et il y en d'autres en Colombie-Britannique et en Alberta. Note that Athapaskan is not a single language but a language family. There are seven or eight Athapaskan languages spoken in the Yukon, four are official languages in the NWT, and there are others in BC and Alberta. Luigizanasi 17:02, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, not as simple as I would have hoped. Anyway, we'd be able to better encourage native service orgs to participate. -- user:zanimum

On peut encourager des wikis dans d'autres langues minoritaires canadiennes aussi. We can also encourage the creation of wikipedias in other minority languages in canada such as Pennsylvania German which is spoken in Waterloo County, Ontario since 1820 and which has a wikipedia on a non-wikipedia site and has been waiting a long time to be accepted. Stettlerj 05:35, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would rather focus on Cree, which has not only the largest numbers of speakers, but stretches from Alberta to Labrador - meaning many local regions could approach their Native Reservations and "encourage" leaders and teachers to help their students develop language skills through the Wiki - and even self-publish textbooks through WikiBooks. Sherurcij 03:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A beginning has been started: List of Cree topics needs to be translated from English to Cree.70.64.182.182 03:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is excellent; if we can find a Cree-speaking user to create one or two articles which we can "show off", that would seem like the next necessary step. Sherurcij 07:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One problem in BC is that, say with the Athapaskan peoples or the Interior/Coast Salishan peoples, that unlike Cree they're very fragmented; Chilcotin is different from Carrier from Tahtlan/Kaska from Dunne-za from Sekani; Lillooet/Shuswap/Nlaka'pamux/Okanagan/Sinixt are also "similar but different"; also the number of speakers who are also web-literate is very small; I think it's Tsimshian that has the largest number of speakers, but there's not a lot of web-penetration so far; Halkomelem is the largest of the Coast Salish languages but its three main dialects all have sufficient difference to make it difficult to do a "common Halkomelem" wiki; the Island/Straits and Upriver dialects have strong educational programs and it might just be that having community/student wikis for them will be a useful educational and historical/cultural tool. I'm bringing this up relation to native-language wikis, not to other kinds of content. w:User:OldManRivers hasn't been around in a while but he's been prolific with Skxwwu7mesh and Kwakwaka'wakw and some other FN content and may have some ideas to offer. One thing about FN material, though, is the ideas of WP:OWN and WP:RS and WP:POV are very much in the offing and cultural sensitivities also, as also WP:COI and WP:AUTO, maybe moreso than with CoC's, enviro groups, etc. as I explained on the /localHistory subpage hereSkookum1 15:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

w:User:Billposer is an Athapaskan expert, based in the Yinka Dene Language Institute in Vanderhoof; he "knows his Wikipedia" though he's a busy academic, and with other topic-areas of interest. Semi-active or inactive FN contributors have surfaced from time to time; w:User:Guujaaw, however, has been persistently political and also peacock (about himself) in his edits and hasn't contributed much; some people if they can't use Wikipedia the way they're used to with other user-generated content just give up, or take offence. Found the same with an academic geological/geographical contributor who couldn't understand why synthesis and OR were against the rules...more thoughts later, and re the other comments above I say go with the Cree and/or the Anishinaabe (partly because there's such a well-established Anishinaabe presence within WP:NorthAmNative).Skookum1 15:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]