Janna Wilson & Sonya Bird

Oct. 3

Air Date: October 3, 2024

Summary

Learn about the Certificate in Indigenous Language Revitalization and how the University of Victoria works with community partners to deliver flexible community-based credit courses that help provide the foundational knowledge and skills for students to engage in, contribute to or initiate language revitalization initiatives in their homes, families, schools and communities.

**SERIES**

Iápi Wakán: Sacred Languages

**HOSTS & PRODUCERS**
Lindell Haywahe, Amanda Leader, William Alexander Yuzicapi

Episode Guest

Janna Wilson is the Program Coordinator for the Certificate in Indigenous Language Revitalization at the University of Victoria. She is passionate about building strong relationships with community partners to co-develop programming that best meets their unique needs, contexts, and priorities. She has 20+ years working in education and has held previous roles as Director of Prevention Programs for Haida Child & Family Services, elementary school teacher, curriculum materials developer and Education Coordinator for the Skidegate Band. Her past experiences and insider/outsider perspective contribute to a strong focus on supporting Indigenous students, instructors and community partners and working to help navigate and break down any institutional barriers to student success.

Episode Guest

Sonya Bird is a grateful settler on the beautiful lands of the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, and an Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Victoria. She has been documenting the details of pronunciation in Coast Salish languages since 2002. She is particularly interested in the role of pronunciation in Indigenous language revitalization. Her current work is focused on supporting adult Hul’q’umi’num’ learners to speak proficiently and fluently. In collaboration with the Hul’q’umi’num’ Language and Culture Society and the Hul’q’umi’num’ Language Academy, she has been documenting the details of pronunciation across Hul’q’umi’num’ speakers of different generations and fluency levels, to understand what the challenges are for learners and to help design pedagogical tools and methods to overcome these challenges. On the pedagogical side, Sonya is particularly interested in exploring the benefits of incorporating phonetic analysis and “speech visualization” into pronunciation learning and teaching. Sonya has also been actively involved in developing and teaching in UVic’s undergraduate and graduate programs in Indigenous Language Revitalization. She is currently the academic advisor for the Certificate in Indigenous Language Revitalization.

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Iápi Wakán: Sacred Languages - Bonus Interviews

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Lindell Haywahe