VANCOUVER – Squamish Nation member Khelsilem is fluent in his native tongue and passionately spearheading a project to revitalize indigenous languages. But he wants to turbocharge his linguistic proficiency by learning an entirely new and universal language — computer coding.

The 25-year-old from North Vancouver plans to preserve and share the Squamish and Downriver Halkomelem languages by acquiring coding skills, which he’ll use to construct a website that gives his community’s lingual traditions worldwide reach.

“Geography is the biggest challenge we have as indigenous people when it comes to revitalizing languages, there’s so many languages in Canada and it becomes really hard to co-ordinate,” he said.

“Technology becomes a really big way for our people to come together in ways that we couldn’t otherwise.”

Khelsilem was among two tables of 20 laptop-laden First Nations people adding their beat to the rhythmic key tappings of 500 British Columbians who gathered over the weekend for a massive computer coding bootcamp… Read More