What Are the Most Spoken Indigenous Languages in Canada?

Canada is the world’s second largest country, and its formation was done on the back of colonization. Inhabiting this land before Europeans arrived were vast numbers Indigenous peoples who spoke their own languages. Many of these languages still exist and are cultural identifiers of the Indigenous people who call Canada home today.

So, which of these languages is the most widely spoken?

Canada is a massive country with huge contrasts and a long history of delicate dealings with the people who lived there before Europeans arrived. The relationships between the native peoples and the Europeans was often an uncomfortable and brutal affair that ushered in huge demographic shifts across the land. 

From the end of the 19th century to well into the 20th century, residential schools were hugely responsible for the destruction of Indigenous cultures across Canada. Children were taken from their families, often forcibly, and educated in the ways of the European colonizers. The last residential school only officially closed in 1990.

The government, however, realized the harm it had done, and in the decades that have followed, official apologies and attempts at reparations have been forthcoming. Despite the destructive nature of colonial activities, much of Indigenous culture survived, as did many languages, some of which are still spoken today. 

Languages and Numbers of Speakers

According to a 2011 census, there were 60 Indigenous languages spoken in Canada. These languages are grouped into 12 distinct language families—a particularly high number, which indicates a considerable amount of diversity among Canada’s Indigenous linguistic landscape. 

By far the biggest family of Indigenous languages spoken in Canada is the Algonquin group, which includes the Cree languages, Ojibway languages, Innu (Montagnais) and Naskapi languages, and Oji-Cree. Other significant language families include the Inuit languages and the Athapaskan languages. 

The most widely spoken Indigenous language in Canada is Cree. Determining numbers of speakers can be tricky in that the language is often cited as including Innu, Naskapi, and Atikamekw as dialects of Cree rather than as their own separate languages. The total native speakers of all these languages/dialects is around 100,000 people. Excluding Innu, Naskapi, and Atikamekw, the total number of native Cree speakers was last reported as 86,475 in 2021. 

While Atikamekw has enjoyed growth, the other languages have reported a slow decline between that last two censuses (2016 to 2021), and they are all listed by UNESCO as vulnerable. 

Inuktitut is the second largest Indigenous language by number of speakers. The last census, in 2021, put the total number of speakers at around 38,000 native speakers with another 4,000 who use it as a second language. It is an Inuit language and is spread over a wide geographical region north of the North American tree line.  It is recognized as an official language in Nunavut and Northwest Territories. Throughout the areas where it is spoken, there are several recognized dialects. 

Like Cree, Ojibway (also Ojibwe or Ojibwa) is a member of the Algonquin language family, and represents the third most widely-spoken Indigenous language in Canada. It has a total of over 25,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom speak it as a native tongue. Also part of the Algonquin language family, Oji-Cree is spoken by over 15,000 people. Mi’kmaq is spoken by around 9,000 people while around 6,500 people speak Blackfoot as a first or second language.

Among the Athapaskan languages in the northwest of Canada, Dene was the most widely reported language spoken according to the 2021 census, with the majority of speakers living in Saskatchewan, and totaling just over 11 000 first and second-language speakers.

Mixed Fortunes

While some Indigenous languages in Canada have remained stable in terms of numbers of speakers, there are many that are experiencing rapid decline. A great many of them are so endangered that they will likely become extinct within a few decades. Even the Mechif language, which is an evolutionary mix of Cree and French, and which is spoken by around 1,800 people, is listed as critically endangered, despite having experienced a massive rate of growth in number of speakers over the past few years. 

As minority languages, it is evident that care is needed in the preservation of Canada’s Indigenous linguistic character.