file photo.
Last year, 195,695 Canadians identified Indigenous languages as their mother tongue. That’s a drop of more than 8.3 per cent from the last census in 2011.
Saskatchewan followed the national trend with just 28,340 people listing Indigenous languages compared to 30,895 four years earlier. That represents a decline of 8.2 per cent.
In Regina, the number of people identifying Indigenous languages as their mother tongue was 460 in the last census, up 24 per cent from 2011.
In Saskatoon, the figure went down 13 per cent to 1,265 people.
In Prince Albert, the number dropped nearly 19 percent to 1,560 people.
Even with the decline, the number of people identifying Indigenous languages as their mother tongue was almost twice as high as those who identified French. That number dropped 20 per cent from 2011 to 15,060, compared to more than 28,340 for Indigenous languages.
Breaking it down even further, the 2016 Census shows French was listed by only about 4,000 respondents in Saskatchewan as the language most often spoken at home, while Indigenous languages were named by 16,600 respondents.
Data from last year’s census will continue to be distributed throughout the year, with a major release on the growing Indigenous population scheduled for October 25.