GULL BAY — Chief Wilfred King of Gull Bay First Nation says there has been a very good response to the community’s new bilingual street signs.
These street signs were set up throughout the community for residents and businesses operating in the First Nation.
He said the Chief and Council initiated the project to put up the signs last fall.
“I think it’s important because I think that (residents) seem to recognize that their signs are up now and people understand that, ‘OK, yeah, this is what that road used to be for and everything else,’” said King.
“So, it just helps out our language. I think it’s important that when we’re renaming a lot of our buildings and a lot of our processes, it really helps revitalize the language.”
The signs display street names in English and Anishinaabemowin, the community’s language.
The choice to make the signs bilingual, he said was more about language revitalization than anything else.
“Most of our peoples are fluent in both English and Anishinaabemowin,” said King.
“Some of the elders speak very little English, but for the most part, most of our people speak both languages and then we have a few people that speak Anishinaabemowin very well.”
However, another factor, he added, was that the community had never had street signs before and thought it was important to install the street signs and numbering of the houses for emergency issues.
“If there were an emergency, often the police … (and) the ambulance would not know what address to go to. So, we decided to name the streets,” said King.
Many of these new street names are not unfamiliar to these areas in the community and existed before the signs were put up.
The project came about when an elders committee was struck up, said King. With knowledge of the areas, he explained that these elders and residents talked about the history of the community and some of the roads.
“They would be more or less areas that for a long time there’d be certain things and we said, ‘well, how will we name this area of that road, right?’ So, they corresponded with the community area,” said King.
While King cannot speak on the exact cost of the signs, he said it wasn’t a lot of money for what the community put into them in terms of the actual signs, the translations and the committee work.
The community is now trying to put Anishinaabemowin in all of its buildings.