Lead Organizers
Dr. Heather Bliss
Dr. Heather Bliss has been working with members of the Siksika and Kainai communities on documenting and analysing the Blackfoot language for over 15 years. Her main focus is on morphosyntax, articulatory phonetics, and oral stories. She is also the Editor and Curator of the Blackfoot Online Stories Archive.
Dr. Elizabeth Ritter
Dr. Ritter works on syntactic structure, its morphological composition, and its contribution to lexical semantics. To date her work has been based on data from a variety of languages including English, Blackfoot, Hebrew, Haitian Creole, and French. In current research, she is exploring tenselessness, and its implications for clause structure in Blackfoot. Beyond theoretical linguistics, Dr. Ritter has worked on projects supporting language revitalization, including a recent project connecting Siksika students with Siksika storytellers.
Siksika Knowledge Holders
Ikino’motstaan Noreen Breaker
Ikino’motstaan Noreen Breaker is a Siksika Elder with specialized knowledge in Blackfoot language and culture. She holds a BA in Canadian Studies from the University of Calgary and has taught introductory Blackfoot language courses at the University of Calgary. She is one of the authors of a report advising the University of Calgary on how to support Blackfoot language revitalization in the Siksika community.
Naatoopii Lee Breaker
Natoopii Lee Breaker of the Siksika Nation is a Horn Society Elder. He is committed to the revitalization of the Blackfoot language and culture, and he is excited to contribute to this project.
Trevor Solway
Trevor Solway is an acclaimed Siksika filmmaker with accreditation in Indigenous digital filmmaking and Communications. He brings to the project not only his technical expertise in matters regarding video recording and digital editing, but also his artistic vision for how best to capture his ancestral language using digital video, and how to communicate this vision to budding language revitalists in his community.
Curtis Running Rabbit Lefthand
Curtis Running Rabbit-Lefthand, host of The Good Medicine Show on CJSW 90.9 FM, found a lack of Indigenous representation in the music industry so he started Indigenous Resilience in Music, an organization that creates workshops for Indigenous youth and works to Indigenize Calgary’s music festivals. Read more about Curtis’ amazing achievements by clicking below.
Siksapiaki Krista White
Siksapiaki Krista White is the Cultural Coordinator for the Aboriginal Friendship Centre of Calgary. She holds a BA from Mount Royal University. She is a fluent Blackfoot speaker and has experience in teaching the Blackfoot language. She also has expertise in promoting the preservation of Blackfoot culture and language in urban (off-reserve) environments. She has many connections with urban Siksika Elders, youth, and others, and can advise on issues around community outreach within the city of Calgary.
Collaborators
Dr. Darin Flynn
Dr. Flynn’s primary research area is phonology, that is, how speakers organize speech sounds. Through his teaching, research, consultation and training, Dr. Flynn had the privilege to learn and work with native speakers of many Indigenous languages, one them being Blackfoot. Dr. Flynn’s interest lies in both the documentation and the revitalization of Indigenous languages.
Dr. Suzanne Gessner
Dr. Gessner is one of the contributors to language revitalization in British Columbia through her work with First Peoples’ Cultural Council. Her research is grounded in a community-development approach with the goal of ensuring that research and revitalization strategies result in concrete language revitalization results. Dr. Gessner has had the privilege of working with speakers of Dene (Athabascan) languages, especially Dakelh (also known as Carrier), a language spoken in central interior British Columbia.
Dr. Inge Genee
Inge Genee (Piitaakii) is originally from the Netherlands but has lived in Lethbridge since 1997. She teaches linguistics at the University of Lethbridge. She has been studying the Blackfoot language for about 15 years and has worked mainly with speakers from the Kaiani and Piikani communities. Her current work is focussed on the creation of resources to support teaching and learning the language. She is the director of the Blackfoot Language Resources project, and is also involved in projects that hope to develop sophisticated digital tools for the Blackfoot language such as spell checkers, language learning apps, and an intelligent dictionary that can handle inflected forms.
Leanne Morrow
Leanne Morrow specializes in engagement and outreach with the University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources. Amongst other reconciliation-based activities, she mentors Indigenous students in the creation and curation of Indigenous archival materials.
Nathan Chandler
Nathan Chandler is an Audiovisual Conservation Specialist with the University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources. His expertise is in audio recording, editing, and archiving.
Student Assistants
Charm Breaker
Charm Breaker is an exceptional Blackfoot undergraduate student at the University of Calgary. Her major is Digital Communications, and Charm is currently assisting with curating and editing the Blackfoot Stories Database.
Merion Hodgson
Merion Hodgson is a graduate student of Linguistics at the University of Calgary. Merion has investigated various aspects of Blackfoot phonology and syntax, and she has helped organizing numerous events on Indigenous languages revitalization and documentation such as Celebrating Indigenous Languages.
Dušan Nikolić
Dušan Nikolić is a graduate student of Linguistics at the University of Calgary. His main research areas are Phonetics and Second Language Acquisition, but he has also worked on morphological structure of Stoney Nakoda. With his enthusiasm and knowledge of web development, Dušan has given his contribution to this project.
