APTN has joined forces with Rocket Fund Canada on a new project called Living Languages, designed to help Indigenous children and their families learn and retain their languages through screen content steeped in culture and storytelling.
The idea is to work out what actually clicks when teaching Indigenous languages on screen, then turn those findings into a method other producers can follow and reuse across different languages.
At the center of the project is a family-focused language series meant to reach kids wherever they spend their time, whether at home, in the classroom, or out in the community. APTN describes those as the places where language really lives and grows. Running alongside the series is a push to speed up the production of children’s shows in a range of Indigenous languages, widening the pool of high-quality, culturally accurate programming families can actually access.
The work is set up to start small and build out. The first stages cover research, testing concepts through proof-of-concept production, and adapting existing children’s programs into additional Indigenous languages. Lessons from that early phase will shape a framework the team can repeat and scale across later productions, with the aim of growing both the volume of content and the industry’s capacity to produce it.
Living Languages is zeroing in on languages that still have a strong community of speakers but very little children’s educational media available. Indigenous educators and fluent speakers will advise throughout, keeping the content grounded in community knowledge rather than imposed from outside.
“This initiative reflects our ongoing commitment to strengthening Indigenous language education across our platforms,” said Monika Ille, CEO of APTN. “We’re excited to partner with the Rocket Fund and work directly with the communities we serve to ensure children’s media is adaptable, accessible and culturally relevant. We want people to be able to connect with their languages wherever they are and carry that learning forward for generations.”
Agnes Augustin, President and CEO of Rocket Fund, framed the partnership as part of a wider goal. “The incredible partnership with APTN on Living Languages reflects our commitment to advancing content for Canadian and Indigenous children,” she said. “We are so proud to be able to support this special initiative, helping Indigenous languages, stories and voices remain accessible to children and families across generations. This meaningful opportunity to help advance APTN’s impact comes as we continue working toward sustainable solutions for Rocket Fund.”
For APTN, the project aligns with a longer-running effort to expand access to Indigenous language content and build resources that serve communities well beyond a single production cycle.
Rocket Fund Canada backs Canadian-made children’s, family, and youth media across platforms and says it has invested close to $300 million in the sector since it began. APTN, which launched in 1999, was the first national Indigenous broadcaster in the world and now carries its programming across its English and French channels, its Indigenous language channel APTN Languages, the APTN+ streaming service, the APTN Beyond FAST channel, and its YouTube channel.
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