Grants and Contributions

The Chipewyan Prairie First Nation (CPFN) aims to preserve and share its cultural heritage by documenting the oral histories of Elders. The project’s objective is to record traditional teachings, land use practices, hunting, gathering, and cultural knowledge while documenting observed changes to the environment caused by local industry. The project also seeks to equip youth with employable skills through media training, fostering intergenerational connections and strengthening community bonds.

The GTC-GSCI fonds contains the complete research and administrative records created by the Gwich’in Tribal Council Department of Culture and Heritage (GTC-CH), formerly the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute (GSCI). Donated to the Northwest Territories Archives (NWT Archives) in 2018, this collection was added in 2021 to the Canada Memory of the World Register (part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme) in acknowledgement of its incredible linguistic and cultural richness and significance to the Gwich’in, northern, and Canadian cultural landscapes.

This irreplaceable collection preserves Indigenous traditional knowledge, language, and cultural material, created with the specific goal of safeguarding and promoting Gwich’in language and culture.

This project proposes a continued partnership between GTC-CH and the NWT Archives to hire a professional archivist. Now entering its fourth phase, the project is titled “Arrangement, description and digitization of special media in the GSCI-GTC fonds.” This phase is part of a broader, multi-phase effort to fully arrange, describe, and preserve the GTC-GSCI fonds. The partnership between the GTC and the NWT Archives has resulted in an agreement that will provide security, high preservation standards, advanced intellectual control, and increased access for the material.

The Rama First Nation has a series of language resources that require digitization to ensure that they are accessible online and properly archived for broad access. With the support of Library and Archives Canada, we will achieve this goal in alignment with our Nation’s protocols through a three-phased project: pre-digitization, digitization, and online archival work.

Through previous Listen, Hear Our Voices funding the Yukon Native Language Centre (YNLC) was able to set up a state-of-the-art digitization facility, work closely with 11 of 14 Yukon First Nations (YFNs) to identify prioritized audio recordings for digitization, and digitize a total of 825 of the prioritized materials. Although 825 is a massive achievement, it was clear through YNLC communications with YFNs that the YNLC audio recording collection holds far more than 653 prioritized audio recordings (the 11 participating YFNs requested a total of 871 audiocassettes).

The goal of this follow-up project is to continue with the digitization of prioritized audio recordings, as well as expand the YNLC capacity for digitization and intellectually connect existing materials of different formats.

The Preserving and Digitizing project aims to teach and sustain the Munsee language, culture, and heritage while building capacity for heritage preservation. To achieve these goals, the project involves digitizing and describing approximately 200 photographs that document the history of Munsee Delaware Nation.

The photographs belong to the Dolson family, a large and longstanding Munsee family committed to preserving and teaching their language and history. Aaron Dolson is a cultural leader, while his sister and mother, Karen and Heather, were language teachers and preservers. His parents were involved in many business, religious, and healthcare activities, and his grandfather, Bill Dolson, was a Chief for many years. The family’s saved photographs, which document their lives and activities, are of great significance to our nation's heritage.

This rich modern cultural history is documented in eight photo albums, two cases, and loose photographs. Our expectation is that, together, these materials will be an excellent record of life at Munsee Delaware Nation over the past century. By fostering discussion around these photographs, the project seeks to illuminate the cultural history of Thames River First Nations communities, as well as the interactions with local settler and mixed communities in Elgin and Southwold County, including Middlemiss, Melbourne, Delaware and London, Ontario

The Woodland Cultural Centre Language Department (WCC-LD) recently acquired an extensive set of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫˀ (Cayuga) language material. Compiled between the 1960s and 2010s, this collection features prominent Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫˀ language speakers from Six Nations of the Grand River. It includes numerous photographs and handwritten notebooks related to the recordings, and approximately 250 recordings and 50 publicized books. Topics covered include council and ceremonial speeches, and vocabulary sets.

This collection holds a wealth of linguistic, cultural, and political knowledge unique to Six Nations that would greatly benefit ongoing Iroquoian language revitalization efforts. Our objective is to archive, digitize, and publicize this collection. A key focus is ensuring that the WCC-LD is fully equipped with the necessary tools to digitize its holdings effectively.

This project builds on work funded through Listen, Hear Our Voices in 2020–2022, during which our university/community team repatriated 57 hours of Plains Cree recordings collected by the Royal Alberta Museum in 1972 from the community of Kawacatoose First Nation (KFN). The repatriated materials consist of digitized copies of the original reel-to-reel recordings made in the 1970s and accompanying written English summaries. While our digitized copies are now preserved from physical decay, they remain difficult to listen to due to poor recording quality and the idiomatic speech patterns of the speakers. Additionally, the transcripts produced in the 1970s were created by a speaker of Plains Cree from a different region, resulting in abbreviated shorthand and some mistranslations of the original spoken words.

Our objectives with this project are to: (1) select a subset of 20 stories to share with KFN members and the public through the (2) creation of accurate English translations of the selected recordings and the (3) creation of Standard Roman Orthography texts (written Plains Cree) of the selected recordings. These objectives will make the historic archival recordings, with their rich Plains Cree vocabulary and cultural content, available for future language learners while increasing the understanding of Plains Cree history among those participating in the project.

The goal of this project is to create an accessible and searchable digital archive of Native Counselling Services of Alberta’s cultural and historical videos. The archive will consist of collections of videos that include notable historical and cultural research created by the organization about the organization and Indigenous interpretations of natural law and justice in Canada and Alberta.

Between 1990 and 2000, the Inuvialuit Social Development Program (ISDP) conducted three major oral history projects to document Inuvialuit use and traditional knowledge of the Yukon North Slope (including Herschel Island) and Banks Island (Northwest Territories). These were: 1) the Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island) Cultural Study (1990–1991); 2) the Yukon North Slope Cultural Resources Survey (1991–1994); and 3) the Aulavik Oral History Project (1995–2000).

Thanks to 2022–2023 funding from Library and Archives Canada's Listen, Hear Our Voices, the audio and textual materials produced during these oral history projects are now accessible on the Inuvialuit Digital Library (IDL) website.

The current project’s goal is to digitize 664 slides and photographs from these three Inuvialuit oral history projects and integrate them into the Inuvialuit Digital Library. Activities include sorting, identifying, and digitizing 182 colour slides and 482 black-and-white photographs depicting Inuvialuit Elders, the places they visited, and the heritage features they discussed. After digitization, these images and their accompanying information will be added to the Inuvialuit Digital Library. Furthermore, 844 photographs already available on the IDL website will be reviewed to address missing information and edit mistakes.

In 2022–2023, Cold Lake First Nations (CLFN) initiated foundational efforts to preserve the Nation's documentary heritage by creating an Archives Policy, an Archives Committee, and a Facility Plan. This led to CLFN's 2023–2024 Listen, Hear Our Voices project "Digitizing the Documentary Heritage of Cold Lake First Nations." This project focuses on digitizing at-risk items needing urgent intervention, such as oral history maps and media (cassettes, videos and floppy disks), expanding the Nation's digital storage capacity, and researching into accessibility models.

As a result of the 2022–2023 project, it has become apparent that next steps should be continued digitization of paper-based records into a digital inventory. This will be achieved using a scanner and software package purchased this year.