Death by suicide: Community responses to Maliseet language death at Tobique First Nation, New Brunswick, Canada

Three years of observation in Maliseet language instruction classes in Mah-Sos School at Tobique First Nation and Maliseet language instruction and practice in the community have compelled me to examine the literature on language death. Cross-cultural anthropological and linguistic studies in the last three decades have begun to establish a comparative database that facilitates the assessment of relative viability of endangered languages. The recent literature utilizes "extinction" rhetoric to promote the revitalization of endangered languages worldwide. My three years of field observations on Tobique First Nation bring to the discussion on language death a case study where many of the contributing factors in the endangerment of languages are dramatically replicated. I argue, however, that the community of Tobique is experiencing language death as death by suicide. This challenges the prevailing discourse by focusing on community as active participants of language politics and not as helpless victims of hegemonic pressures.;This study also takes a reflexive stance to highlight the methodological complexities and contradictions of being both a native and an anthropologist working on the contentious topic of aboriginal language and cultural survival. Situating myself in the difficult middle ground of analyst and actor allowed me to perceive theoretical and methodological options that presented the fieldwork experience in a unique perspective.;The result of my reflexive investigation of Maliseet language death at Tobique First Nation provides a case study that gives the speakers in the community greater choice in the fate of their language and culture, and in the formation of aboriginal identity vis-a-vis Maliseetness. The completion of this study marks the conclusion of the first phase of my own contribution to Maliseet language revitalization. I conclude with a personal statement on the importance of exercising alternative vitalities for the present and future Maliseet language, culture and identity.