Motorola launches Indigenous Collections app for language and cultural preservation
Motorola has launched a free Android app called Indigenous Collections, developed with members of the Rainy Lake Ojibwe community to document and preserve the Ojibwe language, along with associated stories, landmarks and family knowledge. The initiative matters because it offers a modern, accessible tool for safeguarding an indigenous language and cultural heritage that might otherwise be at risk of being lost, while giving the community direct control over what is shared publicly.
The app was created with key contributors including Ojibwe language instructor Jason Jones and Dr Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University in Minnesota, and is available to download free of charge via the Google Play Store. Only knowledge the community has agreed to share publicly is included in the app, reflecting an emphasis on storytelling as a means of passing on language, worldview and history. The project forms part of Motorola's wider Indigenous Languages Initiative, run in partnership with the Lenovo Foundation, which works with indigenous communities to digitise and preserve their languages while making modern smartphone technology more accessible to indigenous speakers.
- Motorola launches free Indigenous Collections app for Android
- Built with Rainy Lake Ojibwe community to preserve language and stories
- Part of wider Motorola-Lenovo Foundation Indigenous Languages Initiative