Rena Patrick, Audrey Casper, Angelina Hopkins-Rose and Deborah Doss-Cody wait for their names to be called during convocation ceremonies at UBC Okanagan on Thursday afternoon. The four make up the inaugural graduating cohort of the Bachelor of St'át'imc Language Fluency.
UBC Okanagan has conferred its first Bachelor of St'át'imc Language Fluency degrees, marking a milestone in the university's ongoing partnership with Interior Salish communities to protect and revitalize one of British Columbia's most critically endangered Indigenous languages.
Four graduates crossed the stage at UBC Okanagan on Thursday, completing a degree shaped by years of immersion-based learning, community-engaged scholarship and a collaboration between UBCO, the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the Lillooet Tribal Council, through its St'át'imc Education Institute.
Rena Patrick (N'Quatqua), Audrey Casper (Tsal'alh), Angelina Hopkins-Rose (New Westminster) and Deborah Doss-Cody (Xáxli'p) make up the inaugural cohort.
St'át'imcets is an Interior Salishan language spoken in the territory around the middle Fraser and Lillooet rivers. Fewer than 50 fluent speakers remain in the northern St'át'imc area, nearly all of them elderly, making the arrival of university-credentialed, immersion-trained graduates a significant moment for St'át'imc communities.
In communities like N'Quatqua, which sits between the northern and southern St'át'imc dialects, only a handful of silent speakers remain-people who understand the language but rarely speak it aloud.
"It's so important to keep it going, keep it flowing, because we're losing it," says Patrick, an early childhood educator who already uses the language daily with the children in her care and hopes to establish a language nest in her community.
The Bachelor of St'át'imc Language Fluency is the third of UBCO's four Interior Salish language degrees, offered through the Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies . It follows inaugural cohorts in Nsyilxcn and NłeɁkepmx, with Secwépemc welcoming its first cohort in 2025.
Students complete a two-year diploma at the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology before transferring to UBCO for third and fourth-year study, combining intensive immersion coursework, domain-specific language acquisition, culture courses and language revitalization theory.
Graduates are not only learning to speak their language, but also to become practitioners capable of leading community-based revitalization work.
Much of the program was delivered online, which the graduates say made it accessible to students spread across distant communities. They also forged a tight bond as a result.
"Anytime we had assignments or were challenged with deadlines, we really leaned on each other," says Doss-Cody. "We always worked together and supported each other pretty steadily, pretty hard."
For Hopkins-Rose, who grew up in the city with no exposure to the language, the degree has reshaped her path. She now speaks the language at home with her two children and continues her education in Indigenous language revitalization at the University of Victoria in July.
"The trajectory of my life completely shifted," she says. "To hear my children speak the language is incredibly inspiring. I have a lot of hope for our language."
Casper, who returned to the language decades after first being drawn to it as a child, says completing the degree has connected her to the relatives who came before her.
"Regaining our language has really made me feel closer to the ancestors who have passed," she says.
All four graduates plan to continue working with the language. Hopkins-Rose begins a Master of Indigenous Language Revitalization at the University of Victoria in July. Patrick is beginning a community-based Bachelor of Education program this fall, and Doss-Cody also plans to pursue a Bachelor of Education with the goal of teaching.
"My heartfelt congratulations to the St'át'imc graduates and the communities that support them. We look forward to future collaborations with our partners in the newly formed Interior Salishan Studies Centre," says Dr. Jeannette Armstrong, the Interior Salish Languages program coordinator.
Chief Justin Kane, chairperson of the Lillooet Tribal Council, says the working relationship between the Interior Salish Nations and post-secondary institutions has taken another significant step forward in supporting students and language revitalization.
"This is such a momentous achievement and will serve our longstanding mandate to revitalize our St'át'imc language," he says. "This has always been an important part of the work led by our elders, and it will go a long way toward ensuring our language and culture remain in place for future generations."
UBCO's Interior Salish language degrees are among a small number of university-level immersion programs in Indigenous language fluency in Canada.
More than 2,600 students receive degrees from UBCO this week, joining 435,000 alumni spread across nearly 150 countries.
Three more ceremonies are set for Friday in Kelowna:
8:30 am: Faculty of Health and Social Development (School of Health and Exercise Sciences, School of Nursing, School of Social Work); College of Graduate Studies
11 am: Faculty of Education (Okanagan School of Education); Faculty of Management; College of Graduate Studies
1:30 pm: Faculty of Applied Science (School of Engineering); College of Graduate Studies
Ceremonies will be livestreamed at graduation.ok.ubc.ca .
