Motorola launches Indigenous Collections app to preserve Ojibwe language and culture

Motorola has announced the release of its new Indigenous Collections app, developed in partnership with members of the Rainy Lake Ojibwe community. The mobile application is designed to document and preserve the Ojibwe language, along with the community's stories, landmarks, and family knowledge.

Key collaborators on the app include Ojibwe language instructor Jason Jones and Dr. Anton Treuer, an author and professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. The app is available for free on the Google Play Store.

Because the app is open to anyone, it only distributes cultural knowledge that is already publicly shared. Dr. Treuer commented, “The app's focus on preserving and sharing Ojibwe stories is particularly valuable. Storytelling remains one of the most effective ways to transmit language, cultural knowledge, worldview, and community history. The current collection already represents a meaningful archive, and the planned addition of further stories will increase the long-term significance of the project.”

The initiative is part of Motorola’s broader Indigenous Languages Initiative, run in partnership with the Lenovo Foundation. The two organizations work with indigenous communities to digitize and preserve their languages, while also adapting modern smartphone technology to make it more accessible to indigenous speakers.