Director's Message - January 2020

Guy Rodgers presenting at State of the Arts Activation Conference. Still from video by Daybi.

A new year is always an occasion for self-examination, and the beginning of a decade offers a heightened occasion for new perspectives and beginnings. This numerically evocative year – 2020 – invites particular clarity of vision.

ELAN has grown rapidly over the past few years, expanding our full-time staff from two to six, who work with a growing team of project managers and freelance project staff. The size and complexity of our projects has also grown, from ARTS2U, which is highly technical, and Québec Relations, which is ambitious, to our ArtEd Initiatives projects (ACE and ArtistsInspire Grants), which involve hundreds of artists, educators and schools, as well as thousands of students.

The challenge of clearly communicating what ELAN is working on, and how it benefits members, falls to our Communications Coordinator. I would like to pay tribute to the excellent work of Lital Khaikin, who began as Membership and Communications Assistant in 2018 under an Emploi Québec program, and has assumed responsibilities as Interim Communications Coordinator during Sufia Duez’s maternity leave. Our 15^th anniversary, and the roll-out of two large projects, on top of regular activities presented prodigious communication challenges, which Lital took in stride (including revamping ELANews and adding pages to our website). We enter 2020 with a clarity of message to match our vision.

Guy Rodgers

Executive Director

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.