Marianne Ignace has an ambitious plan. Within the next five years, she hopes to have developed language-learning apps with speakers and learners of some 12 First Nations languages in B.C. and Yukon.

The director of SFU’s First Nations Language Centre (FNLC), she has a $2.5-million project grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to get the job done.

The seven-year project, begun in 2013, is a partnership between the FNLC and 22 First Nations community groups in B.C. and Yukon, representing 12 languages, that are dedicated to maintaining and revitalizing their Indigenous dialects.

Over the past year, Ignace has been working with the Secwepemc, Upper St’at’imc (Lillooet), Skwxwu7mesh, Tahltan, Haida, Ts’msyen, and Tlingit, who are all in the midst of designing the first level of their apps.

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