Born in Victoria, Emily grew up on the unceded territories of the Lewungen and SENĆOŦEN-speaking peoples of BC, Treaty 6 territory in Alberta, and the Huron-Wendat and Wabanaki territories in Québec. She currently lives on unceded Syilx territory in BC, and is working towards her PhD at UBC Okanagan in the Community Engagement, Social Change, & Equity program.
In 2018, Emily completed her master’s degree in Linguistics at the University of Victoria. Her thesis, entitled Literacy and Language Revitalization: Leaving a Visible Trace, sought Indigenous perspectives on literacy in Indigenous language revitalization (ILR) and explored the role of print literacy in ILR, particularly in the context of decolonization.
Emily also holds a BA from the University of Alberta in Linguistics and International Studies and a Certificat de Français Langue Étrangère from Université Laval. Since 2014, Emily has been involved in a number of digital projects, including the Endings Project and Le Mariage sous L’Ancien Régime at the University of Victoria, the Database of Algonquian Language Structures and the Blackfoot Oral Stories Archive through the University of Manitoba, as well as various orthography projects. Emily’s interests include language and cultural revitalization, decolonization and decolonialism, Indigenous rights, data sovereignty, digital collections, and multimedia archiving.
Email address: comeau.emily3@gmail.com
ALDR: Association of Linguists for Documentation and Revitalization 