People from a minority/dying culture, how do you feel about it?
There are many cultures around the world that are suppressed by majoritarianism. They have to face challenges like forced assimilation, language discrimination and refusal to acknowledgement of their unique identity. In fact, many cultures have been identified by UNESCO, that will soon cease to exist - either that they're vulnerable, or completely extinct. How do you, as a minority, feel, knowing that your entire identity will cease to exist in a few decades? Do you have a sense of camaraderie towards other minorities from other parts of the world, say, the Ainu people, or the Brahui pastoralist?
I'm french Canadian from my dad and native from my mom. I truly feel like most of the country would be more then happy if we disappear. They openly hate on french canadians and publicly pretend ro care about first nations but they really dont. I expect both cultures to be completly gone in a century or two, sooner maybe.
I wonder if this will get me downvoted. I don't care one way or the other about French/Quebecois culture. It's kinda neat, they can do their thing in Quebec. What I really don't like is the forced French language on the rest of the country. You want a federal job? Better learn French. You want a provincial (not in Quebec) job? Better learn French. Want to enter politics? You need French. Want to move to the head of the line for any job in any sector? You'll get that if you speak French. I think I'm treated like a second class Canadian because I don't speak French. The Premier of British Columbia simply pointed out that there are more Mandarin speakers than French speakers in BC, and he was crucified. I'm sorry but this French language thing on the rest of the country is absolutely bonkers and needs to go.
Francophones are not prioritized for employment or political opportunities. Do you know which linguistic group is prioritized for such roles?
Bilinguals.
Do you think a unilingual French speaker would have more opportunities in Canada than a unilingual English speaker?
Of course, people whose first language is French have much higher rates of bilingualism than people whose first language is English, for a myriad of reasons. But I find it illuminating that for all the whining I see from (some) Anglophones about "lack of opportunities because they don't speak French", their proposed solutions always focus on stripping Francophones of their rights instead of encouraging French language education for Anglophones. Many countries around the world have huge percentages of their population being able to speak two (or more!) languages, why shouldn't we strive for that? I see no downsides to increased bilingualism.
I live in New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province in the Canada, where our unilingual Anglophone premier repeats the same talking points you do about how difficult it is for unilingual Anglophones to advance themselves in our province. All while holding the highest elected title in the province without speaking a lick of French.
Honestly a lot of Quebecois have a persecution complex from centuries of actual mistreatment. But the current situation is fine and their culture is definitely not dying. I live near the Ontario Quebec border and it very clearly feels like a meeting point of two distinct cultures. And neither of them is being dominated by the other. They exist alongside eachother
We do have a strong cultural identity. But even I, who is aware of the problem and think we should defend our culture, have stopped consuming it since the arrival of Netflix and streaming services.
Internet has a part in that as well. When I was a kid, you would start learning English in grade 4, meaning 10 years old, in school. My son could count to 10 in English at 2 years old. Because youtube. Because of all the diversity of content we have access to now, that we didn't have access to back in the days.
It's probably the same thing in most non English countries.
Is slow, it's pernicious, and probably inevitable over time. We can probably slow it down... I'm not sure.
I'm a Tuluva, a minority group in the south of India. I am also a Tulu separatist for reasons mention here - I'm in agreement with most of them, but there are a few more reason I have this stance, including cultural appropriation and discrimination.
You can read about the recent efforts at digitization of my language in this article - although I've never met anyone who knows how to write. Maybe a few scholars are good at this? I tried to learn the abugida (the Indian equivalent of "alphabet"), but they're pretty hard for someone like me who's never learnt a Dravidian language before.
FWIW I love French Canadians and love the diversity and culture they add to Canadian life. I think Letterkenny gave a great example of what a singular culture it is and I really enjoyed them including them.
Almost all cultures disappear within a century or two. Do you think Canada is anything like it was 200 years ago? Shit, it's probably not even what it was like 50 years ago.
45 years ago the US overwhelmingly voted Reagan into office. That asscunt would get so fucking rejected in primaries now for being a "RINO" based on his gun control policies alone. Things change. Everything changes. When I was a kid it was totally fine to run around with a Southern Loser Flag on your shirt. Should that culture return? Some people think so.
You can either be a troglodytic conservative dingus or you can contribute to the new culture and a better tomorrow.
Three hours and no answers only one answer, which is understandable. Many of these people don't have access to certain technology because of their economic situation, and even when they do, their voices are so small that they get overshadowed by the majority. I'm not of a dying culture, but I am aware of the many tribes in Papua and how they're vulnerable from Indonesia's interference. While many of the Papuan tribes aren't dying per se, it's very difficult to get online opinions from (indigenous) Papuans in regards to whether their land is colonized by Indonesians, let alone from tribes that are dying.
I don't agree with this network access take. A lot of endangered cultures are simply being assimilated.
I was in a casual quiz in Hong Kong recently and one of the questions required us to know a language with less than 100 speakers. The default answer the quizzers had expected was Macanese Patuá. That sort of regional dialect existed in such a restricted set of conditions and between two different pressures to remove it (between Cantonese and Portuguese), that globalization simply drowned it out.
True, I suppose it depends on the country. In my country, many Papuans live in remote areas where it's hard to access basic necessities like medicine, let alone the internet.
I’m Jewish and I feel meh. There was always a lot of pressure to continue practicing Judaism throughout my life because our numbers are so small and we’re the butt end of conspiracy theories and discrimination from all walks of life and have been for thousands of years.
I’m not religious and don’t believe in any sort of god so I guess I’m responsible for killing my religion and culture I guess. I can relate to the sense of camaraderie in finding another person with the same shared lived experiences in the wild, but I don’t know how much I can relate to the tribes you mentioned.
I’m not concerned as much about my culture dying out because life and everything in it is ultimate meaningless :)
One of the white supremacist tropes they like to push is how white people are endangered by globalism and diversity. These people could use a little diversity that hopefully improves their intelligence. Mai Gad they are stupid.
Well, I'm just from a west euporean village, but I still feel like I could answer your question a little.
Our parents decided not to teach us the local dialect. So now I don't understand a lot of people in my village, including my grandparents. Also I feel things like shanties are a dying breed.
I've been thinking of buying a book that was written in my local dialect in order to get closer to my roots.
I feel like our parents decided to look forward and made us a part of that.
People from the cities still comment on my accent. And to me they sound like they have a stuffed nose.
Personally I think that this is how culture works, and we are currently living in an exciting one, and that's ok. I also believe a higher power still has access to all those forgotten people, so it doesn't bother me. After all isn't time just an illusion?
Here's a list of all the vulnerable and extinct languages. I happen to be one of those minorities, so I was interested in hearing other's view on the same.
It enrages me. I actively deny the settler culture; but damned if my denial changes anything. When their process is done, what I consider my culture will be a lowercase-n nothing compared to the capital-N Nothing™ that settler culture is. And it feels like not enough of my skinfolk have enough steel in their spines to fight anymore. Black Capitalism and liberal misleaders in the Black Congressional Caucus have ruined us, and our own reactionaries have made a mockery of Black radicalism.
It's a sorry fuckin state of affairs; and honestly what informs my interactions with other minority cultures-- because 9 of 10, the same will happen to them if they don't resist the same way, and I'll be called everything from a fool to a traitor for aligning with them instead of the settlers who have their boot on my neck.
I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. If you live in a "dominate or be dominated" world, it comes as a surprise to not see non-dominating cultures as more worthy of the spotlight that others ruin their chances for. Although my link to said culture isn't direct, when I see the big players fighting, I shake my head. The innocence of humanity is truly being tested.
I'm smart and I'm mostly fine with my minority dying out. It's definitely sad that in 50 years people will look at things my people created and will not understand any of it but then again, it's a natural process. I'm sure our art will somehow influence their art and in a way it will live on.
intellectual pursuits combined with recent-ish DNA test revealed to me that i'm from a very recently dead culture (american yaqui & tarahumara) whose very few aware decedents have been fighting tooth-and-nail to re-cultivate it by patterning themselves after their nearest cousins (mexican yaqui & tarahumara) along with a recent recognition from the american government for the pascua reservation in arizona.
they were literally wiped out by the pogroms carried out by colonial settlers in the american southwestern united states during the 19th and early 20th centuries and it was merely the imaginary line on the map called the mexican border that allowed anything from the culture to survive at all.
if it weren't for people who rejected colonialist narrative of indigenous people happily becoming mestizos (or americans with Cherokee princess great grandma's); there would be nothing but a fringe belief and, if it weren't for DNA tests that heavily bolsters it, that fringe belief would continue to wane into nothingness.
you'd think that 2/3rds of your DNA being tied to a group of people and their genocide occurring less than 2 generations ago would ensure that something of that cultural inheritance would survive, but I'm living & breathing proof that the colonial narrative is MUCH more powerful than any heritage as the older generations of my family continue to strenuously reject both the science and the lore of their true roots.
It sucks. I’m autistic, and I spilled sweat and blood to learn my culture. Now my culture is being systematically uprooted and destroyed, and the period during which my brain could learn culture has passed.
So now I’m the human detritus cast along the way on the path to progress. And it sucks. And the fact that my sacrifice and that of millions
of other people is necessary to make room for this new culture, makes me hate this new culture.
Sorry, you aren't being clear here. Do you mean that autistic culture is disappearing, of that your culture is disappearing and you also happen to be autistic?
Because, as an autistic person, I really fuckin' hope that a root cause for autism is found an eliminated, because it's goddamn miserable.
My region's culture. All the people who grew up where and when I am, the culture we had. We're now mixed into a larger region's culture and unless we congregate, our culture is going away. It's actually being criminalized, and framed as immoral by the new dominant culture.
So I'm shunned if I practice my culture, treated as dangerous by those around me.
Not talking about autistic culture itself. I'm talking about the regional culture. The place where I'm from. That's being dismantled by contact with a more dominant culture, and it sucks. I feel sort like a traveler who can't go home.
And, being autistic, I also have the problem of being very bad at adapting to culture at all. Adopting all the mannerisms and sayings and tendencies that gain a person fluid acceptance into a culture, is really hard for an autistic person. NTs just sort of absorb it unconsciously, but we have to exert large amounts of conscious work to make it happen, and my ability to do that work has decreased as I've gotten older.
I'm not sure if this even counts but I'm from Cornwall, which at one point was a separate and distinct culture from England, but hasn't been for hundreds of years. But once it had it's own language, and has been recognised as being culturally distinct by the UK government and the EU.
It doesn't really impact me in any big way, especially since I don't even live in the UK anymore. I know a handful of words and phrases in Cornish and there's been a bit of a movement in the last few years to revive it somewhat (it's on some road signs and things like that), but generally the rest of the UK doesn't care, and if you talk about it to anyone outside of Cornwall they'll usually just make fun of you.
I'm more of the "99% assimilated" kind, interested in learning what didn't go down to me in more natural way.
Well, my paternal line ancestors are from a group of <ethnicity and religion> villages, naturally wiped out in <year>, the amount of people with roots from the same place on the whole planet is maybe just a bit more than the amount of <"titular" nation> living there.
The dialect is dead (there are some traits of it and examples documented).
Every time I abstractly or not talk about that with most people, I encounter "international law" bullshit, something about "recognized borders" and "rule of law" or simply approval of how it is and general attitude as if I were the problem and not <"titular" nation's state>.
Yes, of course that place doesn't belong to that state and any kind of violence is justified against it and its supporters, anytime, anyplace. A lot of people having nothing to do with that state feel indignation hearing\reading about that, towards me.
Or my <another ethnicity> side, which is supposedly doing not so bad at preserving its culture, which has its own state, only that state sucks and most of the organizations about that ethnicity suck, because they serve that state.
So I almost feel as if that state and its works replacing the perception of that culture I like were a continuation of genocide sometimes.