2017 Governor General’s Innovation Award Winners
OTTAWA—The Office of the Secretary to the Governor General is pleased to announce the winners of the 2017 Governor General’s
Ottawa, Ontario
Taking steps to preserve endangered Aboriginal languages in Canada
Nominated by:
THE FEDERATION FOR THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Year: 2017
About the Innovation
Marie-Odile Junker has been a pioneer with respect to endangered Aboriginal languages in Canada, exploring how information and communication technologies can be used to preserve these languages. She has also brought together numerous speaker communities by using a participatory-action research framework that has resulted in the creation of several collaborative websites, including the Algonquian Linguistic Atlas and its online dictionaries.
About the Innovator
Dr. Marie-Odile Junker is active in Indigenous language documentation, maintenance, and revitalization. She uses a participatory-action research framework to work with communities and individuals interested in saving their language and seeing it thrive in the 21st century. She has developed several websites and online dictionaries for languages of the Algonquian family (Cree, Innu, Atikamekw). She is leading the co-creation of the Algonquian Linguistic Atlas: www.atlas-ling.ca, a large collaborative project that is building a digital infrastructure for Algonquian dictionaries and other resources.
