Final Data Report

Indigenous women lead language preservation in Canada

The Mi'kmaq First Nation are indigenous to present-day Atlantic Canada (Flickr/Shawn Harquail).

More Indigenous women speak or understand their primary Indigenous language than men in Canada, Statistics Canada reports. 

By number, there are more off-reserve Indigenous women than men who speak their primary Indigenous language. However, there are also more Indigenous women than men in Canada.

Comparing the percentage of speakers to the population in each region, more Indigenous women than men speak their primary Indigenous language in all provinces and the Northwest Territories.

The average Indigenous language speakers across the country is 35.2 per cent of Indigenous women, to 32 per cent of Indigenous men. Over 716,000 Indigenous women to just 648,000 Indigenous men speak or understand their primary Indigenous language.

The difference is the largest in the Northwest Territories, where 68.3 per cent of Indigenous women speak or understand their Indigenous language, compared to just 59.7 per cent of Indigenous men.

There are more Indigenous women than men who speak their native language, because women generally tend to be better language learners. Women and men learn languages differently, WiseWard reports.

"(F)emales prove to be better in terms of vocabulary strength, verbal fluency and quality of speech, yet when it comes to writing skills, males are better," as reported by Khalefa Kheder and Ridha Rouabhia.

Many Indigenous languages were not written systems, until after colonization, as per the First Peoples' Cultural Council. In B.C., the province with more than half the First Nations languages in the country, none had written systems until colonization. 

In combination due to the systems many Indigenous languages use and because women tend to grasp the verbal aspects of language better than men, it suggests why we see this phenomenon among Indigenous women today.

Furthermore, more Indigenous women speak or understand their language than men, because oftentimes they are the traditional keepers of language and culture.

Historically however, this was not always the case. 

Indigenous women "seemed to experience less language maintenance or continuity in speaking their mother tongue than men," Mary Jane Norris writes in Restoring the Balance: First Nations women, community, and culture. This can be attributed to Indigenous women who married outside or migrated out of their communities or reserves, Norris reports. 

Prior to 1985, Indigenous women who married out of their communities lost their "Indian status" under the Indian Acts of 1876 and 1951, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. Since 1985, Indigenous women have been able to retain their status, fostering more connection between them and their communities.

Despite more Indigenous women speaking their primary Indigenous language, fluency between women and men is close to an even split. 

In four of nine regional areas surveyed, the difference between fluency among Indigenous women and men is less than one percentage point. 

Yukon is not included in the graph below as the information was too unreliable to be published, according to Statistics Canada.

The largest difference in fluent speakers is in the Atlantic provinces. Here, more than twice as many Indigenous men speak their primary Indigenous language "very well or relatively well," as compared to Indigenous women.

The graph below is based on the data of the percentages in chart one. For example, of the 21.1 per cent of Indigenous men who speak or understand an Indigenous language in the Atlantic, 12.5 per cent of them are relatively fluent. 

There are 10,920 Indigenous men in the Atlantic who speak or understand their Indigenous language, so 823 are relatively fluent. 

Across Canada, 2.6 per cent of survey respondents did not specify if they speak or understand an Indigenous language. This rate was highest in Manitoba at 3.4 per cent, and the same data point was too unreliable to publish about Yukon respondents.

This data was collected as part of the 2022 Indigenous Peoples Survey (IPS). The IPS was conducted based on 2021 Canadian census data and 52 per cent of people who were surveyed, responded.

The survey's margin of error is 95 per cent, or 19 times out of 20.

Feedback

After receiving feedback on my third data update, I learned I analyzed the data incorrectly. I thought that how Indigenous people rated their fluency was in correlation to the total Indigenous language speakers, instead of the people who said they speak an Indigenous language. This is why I switched to a different part of the data, this time analyzing the rates between Indigenous women and men who speak their primary Indigenous language. The new data set excel workbook links can be viewed here and here!