Patricia Margaret Ningewance, C.M.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Patricia Ningewance Waabi-bizhikiikwe is preserving the Anishinaabemowin language for future generations. A residential school survivor, she has spent decades honouring, teaching and sharing the Indigenous languages the schools tried to eradicate. Notably, she was the first editor of Wawatay News, the longest-running national Indigenous publication, and author of Talking Gookom’s Language, Canada’s most widely used Anishinaabemowin textbook. Now Grandmother for her language in the Manitoba Aboriginal Languages Strategy’s Grandparents Council, she has also proudly passed on her passion to her own grandson, himself now a teacher.