Come on.
[laughter]
My name is Yagorihwanirats and I'm seven-years-old.
I love cats. My name means "I'm like a judge"
I wish I had an English name but I have just a Mohawk name.
I wish I had both. If I had an English name it would be
Mr. Takóhs. Mr. Kitty. This is my brother Takokaratenion.
I'm Wentaháwi Dion Elijah.
Yagorihwanirats goes to Karihwanoron,
a Mohawk immersion school.
I am a stay-at-home mom with my son.
I do help out as much as possible,
so later today I will be substituting in the baby class.
Singing with them and doing some arts and crafts.
Karihwanoron as of right now is the only Mohawk program
in Québec that teaches to the sixth grade.
Every day she's in a hurry to come to school or,
even when she's feeling sick, she's like,
"Yeah Mama, I'm ok. I'm ok. It's all gone now [laughs],
and she wants to hurry up and get on the bus
and see all her friends and everything.
There's a lot of changes coming to Karihwanoron;
it's scary to think about.
The children have no idea that this might be
their last year at the school.
[Bell ringing, bus sound]
I'm at school and these are my friends.
I'm in grade two.
I miss my cat when I'm at school.
0h, I don't know where to start of how much my language
or why it's so important for me, well,
number one it was my grandmother,
the late Francis Dion.
She is one of the great minds behind this school.
She was one that grew up,
forced not to speak our language anymore.
Her struggles at that time to continue is quite inspiring
which means a lot to me, and that's why I...
like I'm gonna get all emotional, but umm
I lived with my mother and my grandmother all in one house
and she would only speak to me in Kanienkeha.
So that's where it first started -- my roots,
my grounding of the language and culture.
[children tweeting like birds]
[children growling like bears]
I was one of the first students
that started up Karihwanoron Mohawk immersion school.
We were so small.
I think there was only like six of us in a class.
And now we're up to thirty-five students.
♪[guitar]♪
My sister's the person that kinda gets things going
gets this school running.
I have four children, and they all attended at Karihwanoron.
Kariwanoron is a home environment program.
We do have a playground, sort of,
we'd like to have a little bit more.
We have a swing set that was donated.
We have the outdoors. But umm it would be nice
to have some playground equipment someday.
We do have a kitchen. We teach our kids how to cook,
so that's basically our cafeteria.
We don't have a gym, currently,
we do rent, sometimes donated at the Kahnawàke youth center.
Hectic day. Go home, try to cook supper.
Collect prizes and head to the Knight's for our bingo fundraiser.
I'll be working in the front, the security table,
with all the prizes and stuff.
It's extremely challenging to be a parent of Karihwanoron.
We all have our households to maintain,
our careers, extra curricular activities for our children,
and then we have Karihwanoron.
But we do it for our children, for the love of our language,
and our culture.
Karihwanoron is not adequately funded.
I mean it's always been a struggle. It's very, very
important to me; it's always been,
and to my family -- especially my mom.
She was the one that gave me the impetus to uh,
to start the school. If Karihwanoron were to close,
it would be devastating,
and actually I think it would break my heart.
I would just like to inform everybody that we reached capacity
and we can't take anymore people.
Its amazing. [laughs]
We just had to put a sign on the door,
'no more room'. We have absolutely no more-
we've never had this many people at our bingo.
The number is G-51
The community supports Karihwanoron by participating
the events that we- we hold. I don't believe that
the community would allow Karihwanoron to close.
I don't feel it. I don't believe it.
Every year there's always that possibility -- you know,
we run short. We're a little bit behind,
and having to borrow, but we always somehow make it.
We have a bingo, there's a bingo over here, too
... where's our floor workers?
I used to work here fulltime for about, roughly, ten years.
There was one time I felt like giving up.
As a single mother,and at the time being a teacher and a parent,
I was just burnt out. I was like,
ready to take my daughter out.
At the same time, I always knew that I couldn't give up.
So how much did we make then for the bingo?
Umm, just somewhere- six-thousand.
Oh wow. Holy smokes.
Yeah, lot of people. Unfortunately we had to turn some down,
so imagine how much we could have made?
-Omg, oh well. -Need a bigger building.
Yeah. [laughs]
We still probably have to raise
maybe $50 000 before the end of the year.
Remember some of the fundraisers
we did way back when?
Remember when we had the haunted house?
Oh yeah.
We had the best- the first best haunted house in Kahnawàke.
Yeah, it was awesome.
Oh there were so many different kinds of- we had spaghetti-
We had skate-a-thons. We had,oh my God, you name it.
Penny Fair that I had to write millions of numbers down.
Oh yeah.[laughter] Cut by hand.
And we collected bottles and cans.
I really wish we could get some adequate funding from the government.
It would be so much easier.
I know, believe me, I wish we could to.
It's because the way we put that we're not following
their criteria, so we haven't been able to fit in right.
We don't have English programming.
We don't have French programming.
We don't have Canadian history.
It's completely in Kanienkéha, so we have to work on that, too
umm ... could take another 20-years. I hope not, but.
Well, I don't think I'll be around then.
Yes, you will!
One of the things that I've always dreamed of
was having a high school like fully-
full Mohawk immersion. That would be amazing.
Other countries, they all learn up to their high school
and even beyond their college and university in their language
and I think in order to keep our language alive
and we need to develop in, in- as far as we can go.
So this reconciliation that we talk about means that you need-
the government needs to reconcile what they did
to destroy and to take away our language.
And that was part of our culture, so it's a big loss.
We have a whole generation of people my age
who don't speak the language at all.
And I think that they- the government needs to take responsibility
and to make sure that we have the means
and umm, you know, the teachers and tools
to be able to get our language back.
I was one of the original parents
and I really believe in our language that it's most important
and that we cannot lose it.
Otherwise we will no longer be a people.
And this little guy, that's his first language,
because that's what- that's what he knows.
Trying to keep Karihwanoron open is very difficult ...
it's just very difficult.
But in the end, it's worth it. In the end it's worth it.
Do you know what he's been saying lately?
-What? -We're on the couch,
and he's like pointing to the- my pictures, and he's saying Tóta.
Yeah?
I guess her fire and her spirit is what keeps us going,
keeps me going here. Keeps my sister going.
We'll always continue and never give up.
And that was one of my grandmother's last words
was to speak as much as you can and to never give up
no matter how hard it is.
So this- this place, these children, mean a lot-
mean a lot to us, so ... we'll do anything that we can
to have it continue and never lose who we are.
[singing]
[singing}