Photo by Robert Snache spirithands.net by Eva Wissting I had been in Canada for over a year when I first heard Anishinaabemowin, or the Ojibwe language as it is also called. During the land acknowledgment of an event I attended, I was embarrassed to realize that I had never before heard any of the Indigenous languages of this place. Even worse is that it took me yet another year to hear Sámi ––the Indigenous language of my home country, Sweden. Both Anishinaabemowin and Sámi are listed as endangered languages by, for example, Endangered Languages Project and UNESCO . My first language, Swedish, is a well documented language. In 1786, King Gustav III inaugurated the Swedish Academy with the objective to promote the “purity, vigour and majesty” of the Swedish language––primarily by documenting it in the Swedish Academy Dictionary , but also through publishing books, running a library and managing literary and language related awards and scholarships. The preservation and s...