Anderson, Margaret

Professor Emeritus
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Biography

Margaret Seguin Anderson joined the University of Northern British Columbia in 1992 as Professor of First Nations Studies and the founding Chair of that program. She became Chair of the UNBC Northwest Region in 1994 and has resided in Prince Rupert from that time. She was designated Professor Emerita at UNBC on her retirement, and continues to pursue her research, working with fluent speakers of the Sm'algya̱x language and to develop learning resources with the Ts’msyen Sm'algya̱x Language Authority and School District 52. Margaret authored and edited several books and a number of scholarly articles over her career, and was the principal investigator in a number of large grants from SSHRCC and other granting agencies. She has worked with her Ts’msyen colleagues to develop and maintain the Sm'algyax Living Legacy Talking Dictionary on the web (now available on Webonary). This was the first such multi-media dictionary of an indigenous language in British Columbia. The content of the dictionary database has now also been ported to a Sm'algya̱x site on First Voices. Margaret also co-authored with Marianne Ignace the multi-media resource Visible Grammar: Ts'msyen Sm'algya̱x Grammar Resources - Twenty User-Friendly Modules on Key Ts’msyen Sm'algyax Structures, pioneering the use of coloured "sentence puzzles" to help learners visualize the complex patterns of the language. More recently, working with a team of fluent Sm'algya̱x speakers, she has edited a large collection of Sm'algya̱x texts, largely from the William Beynon Collection from Columbia University. These texts have been rewritten in the contemporary orthography and audio recordings of each revitalized text have been recorded by fluent speakers; this research is ongoing. Examples of the texts and recordings may be found on the website of the Ts'msyen Sm'algya̱x Language Authority. Margaret also continues to teach, focused on sharing her knowledge of the Sm'algya̱x language, which she has added to over the 40+ years since she first started studying the language in Hartley Bay in 1978