Grant Helps Preserve Indigenous Language Recordings

NahHO Productions, a Yukon-based film production company, digitized its large collection of Indigenous language recordings to save them for future generations.

Preserving 50 years of audio history

The survival of Indigenous languages across Canada’s North is under threat. For many languages, few fluent speakers remain. But archival recordings can play a key role in revitalizing these languages. The NahHO collection is drawn from more than 2,000 original tapes collected over the past 50 years. Although all of these recordings were analog, they were accessible using high-quality professional playback equipment.

Creating a digital record of First Nations languages

For Northern communities and First Nations peoples, the NahHO archive holds enormous cultural importance. Thanks to a Canada Council grant, the high-quality analog tapes that make up this collection have been digitized, backed up and shared as broadcast-format, high-definition digital masters. This has created a digital “ark” for threatened First Nations languages and helped to preserve them for future generations.