Marianne Boelscher Ignace (born 1954) is a Canadian linguist and anthropologist. Married into the
Shuswap people Shuswap may refer to:
* Secwepemc, an indigenous people in British Columbia, Canada, also known in English as the Shuswap
** Shuswap Nation Tribal Council, a multi-band regional organization of Secwepemc governments based in Kamloops, British Colu ...
, she is a
Full professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
in the departments of Linguistics and Indigenous Studies at
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...
(SFU), and Director of SFU's Indigenous Languages Program and First Nations Language Centre. In 2020, Ignace was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...
for her work in revitalizing and preserving indigenous languages.
Early life and education
Ignace was born in 1954 in Germany.
She travelled to British Columbia in the late 1970s to continue her education in the community of Old Massett on Haida Gwaii, and was adopted by the elders of the Yahgu ‘laanaas Raven clan.
She earned her PhD in Anthropology from
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...
(SFU) in 1985
with her dissertation titled ''The curtain within: the management of social and symbolic classification among the Masset Haida.''
Career
Upon receiving her PhD, Ignace and her husband Chief Ron Ignace founded SFU's Kamloops satellite campus within the Shuswap nation.
They were originally set up in an old Indian residential school before expanding into SFU's Kamloops campus. In their first year operating, they had twenty students before doubling that number in their second year.
She was subsequently awarded a SFU's Outstanding Alumni Award for "academic achievements and service to the community" and the 2005 CUFA/BC Career Achievement Award. Along with their efforts, Ignace helped establish Shuswap as an optional second language in
School District 73 Kamloops/Thompson
School District 73 Kamloops/Thompson a school district based in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.
The school board serves the city of Kamloops and the communities of Chase, Barriere, Clearwater, Logan Lake
Logan Lake is a district muni ...
. During the program's run, Ignace and her husband taught approximately 450 students, 90 per cent of which were First Nation adults who had never pursued a university education.
In 2013, Ignace was appointed the director of SFU's inaugural First Nations Language Centre and also received a $2.5-million partnership grant from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC; french: Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada, CRSH) is a Canadian federal research-funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary research and traini ...
(SSHRC) to preserve indigenous languages. While serving in this role, she helped establish the Tlli7sa Storybook app, a series of applications aimed at general education of First Nations cultural history and language. Ignace also helped create the First Nations Language Proficiency Certificate in order to combat extinction of the Squamish language.
A few years later, Ignace and her husband co-published ''A Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws: Yerí7 re Stsq'ey's-kucw'' through the McGill-Queen's University Press. Their book was "a model of collaborative approaches to Indigenous history", which included oral histories and 'western' scholarship from both Aboriginal and external sources. It eventually won the 2018 Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia. In 2019, the couple received the Governor General's Award for Innovation "for developing a collaborative approach to research involving Indigenous people and communities". During the same year, Ignace won one of five SSHRC Impact Awards to fund her efforts to document and preserve British Columbia indigenous languages.
In 2020, Ignace was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...
for her work in revitalizing and preserving indigenous languages.
Personal life
Ignace and her husband have one daughter together, Julienne, who also graduated from Simon Fraser University.
Selected publications
*''Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws: Yerí7 re Stsq'ey's-kucw'' (2018)
References
External links
*
* Marianne Ignace's website
www.sfu.ca/people/mignace.html{{DEFAULTSORT:Ignace, Marianne
Living people
1954 births
Simon Fraser University alumni
Academic staff of Simon Fraser University
Linguists from Germany
Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada
21st-century Canadian non-fiction writers
Canadian women non-fiction writers
21st-century Canadian women writers
Canadian women academics
First Nations women
First Nations academics
Secwepemc people
Linguists from Canada
Women linguists
20th-century linguists
21st-century linguists
Linguists of Salishan languages
West German emigrants to Canada