Marianne Ignace

Excellence in Teaching Award, 2023

As an SFU faculty member for three decades, Marianne Ignace has gained respect and admiration among her students for teaching Indigenous languages within Indigenous communities. Dedicated to preserving and restoring Indigenous languages, Secwepemctsín and North Haida in particular, Ignace teaches in person and online, at SFU and within communities. She truly brings the classroom to the community. By empowering students to maintain cultural and social connection to kin and community, Ignace plays an important part in SFU’s reconciliation and decolonization.

Beyond language instruction, Ignace engages her students to reclaim their Indigenous languages by encouraging reflection on their experiences, decolonizing from the harms wrought by a traumatic past, and finding joy in discovering the traditional knowledges of their elders.

Ignace is a Distinguished Professor in SFU’s Departments of Indigenous Studies and Linguistics. She is Director of SFU’s Indigenous Languages Program as well as SFU’s First Nations Language Centre.

To learn more, read the full story here.