University of Saskatchewan

In order to ground the project within the community we plan to invite Masters students and graduates from the Indigenous Language Revitalization program (MILR) to choose appropriate stories or oral histories and Wanuskewin landscapes to pair for virtual storytelling content. Also, employ computer science students to organize and manage the digital content of the project for the Wanuskewin website.

Visit their website at University of Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan Indigenous Cultural Center

As the cultural center supports well-established Indigenous language department and hosts regular events, we plan to invite them to advise on and provide language and storytelling resources, as well as assist with multimedia support.

Visit their website at Saskatchewan Indigenous Cultural Center.

St. Frances Cree Bilingual School

Local language revitalization efforts have been very successful in Saskatchewan, as evidenced by the St. Frances Cree Bilingual School. To continue to build on this community success, we plan to involve k-12 students as both English and Cree speakers in the creation of video content. As several teachers at this institution are current students or graduates of the MILR program at the University of Victoria, this would be an extension of their collaborative role designing the project content.

Visit their website at St. Frances Cree Bilingual School.

Audience

The project will be grounded first within the local community in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan through the collaborative organization and creation of the project’s content. It is important that the project appeal to the local audience first, so that there is a solid community foundation from which a broader audience may be solicited.

Once content is available online for interaction and consumption on the Wanuskewin website, it will provide a virtual experience of the connection between Indigenous language and land to the place of anyone with an internet connection.

This novel content will be available for people who cannot physically visit Wanuskewin - whether it be because of disability, prohibitive economics, or the global pandemic- but still want to have an immersive experience with its cultural heritage. The project is meant to collapse space and time in a way the engages broad digital audiences in a meaningful way.

Visit the Wanuskewin Heritage Park website at Wanuskewin Heritgae Park.