Grants and Contributions

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.

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 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.

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.

This led to CLFN's 2023–2024 Listen, Hear Our Voices project "Digitizing the Documentary Heritage of Cold Lake First Nations."

Through Library and Archives Canada's Listen, Hear Our Voices initiative, those efforts successfully digitized 185 VHS tapes, 82 cassettes, 713 historical maps, 1 452 photographs, and over 82 000 pages of archival documents.