After years of dwindling numbers of fluent speakers, more than 300 people have enrolled in Montreal-area classes hoping to learn to speak the Mohawk language. 

Instructor Kevin Deer has been teaching people about his culture for over 30 years and he said the remarkable thing is that some of his students aren’t Mohawk.

Massachusetts native Leah Garfield-Wright studied linguistics. As she goes through the process of obtaining Canadian citizenship, she said taking the class is about discovering more about Native culture and history.

“It’s strange that many people here in Montreal know how to ‘hola’ and ‘gracias’ and basic words in Spanish, which is great, but there’s no reason why we can’t have the same courtesy to people of the Iroquois Confederacy and Cree nation,” she said.

Deer said that while he hopes his students come away from his class with greater linguistic knowledge, he wants his students to also have an appreciation for Mohawk values, including environmental ones.

“We can’t continue going on the path that we’re going because things are starting to intensify,” he said. “There are more earthquakes, there are more tornadoes, there’s more hurricanes because we are continuing to stress and cause discomfort to the earth.”

Native Montreal, the outreach organization that organizes the classes, has come up against some hurdles. Finding teachers can be an issue, said spokesperson Phillippe Meilleur.

“The reason why we are creating the program is because there has been a cultural genocide perpetrated on all Aboriginal communities,” he said. “The impact of that is, of course, having a reduction in native speakers that are able to be fluent enough to become teachers.”

That’s a problem student Alicia Ibarra-Lemay hopes to help solve by enrolling.

“I won’t be able to fluently speak it but hopefully others who are also Mohawk can teach it and hopefully grow, so more people know it and keep the culture and keep the language,” she said.

Funding is another challenge. Meilleur said the money his organization receives from Heritage Canada isn’t enough for a full year of classes and despite most of Canada’s Mohawk population living around Montreal, there are fears that the language might not survive.

“For Europeans, if you lose French, you got back to France,” said Deer. “If you lose English, go back to England. But for us, if we lose it, where do we go? There’s no other place.”