WEBVTT

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My first love is creating apps
that help people.

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That's why I created
the Ojibway language app,

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to help teach my 12-year-old daughter
how to speak Ojibway.

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Like any parent, I bought her books,
and I bought her CDs.

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I even bought her books with CDs

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(Laughter)

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but they failed in their intended purpose.

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She never learnt Ojibway,
and many of the books still lie unopened.

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I wonder if I still have the receipts.

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When you think about it,

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books really aren't a great way
to teach the language.

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Around that time, I had just bought her
a brand new iPad, about four years ago.

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And she used it every day.

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She loved it, she thought
it was the coolest thing,

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and she never put it down.

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I decided to use that connection

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to teach and have her learn
some basic Ojibway.

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I spent about a month
creating the Ojibway language app.

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I never intended to release it
or even share it with anyone.

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A couple of weeks later, I was sitting
at my kitchen table quietly,

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and I heard my daughter speaking Ojibway.

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She was on the phone with her grandmother.

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She was using the app,
she was speaking Objibway;

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that was truly a magical moment,
and it touched my heart.

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And I knew that I had to share
the app with everyone.

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I wanted every parent to experience
that magical moment.

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when their child is speaking
their native language.

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So that's what I did,
I released the app for free.

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And I can tell you that the next time
I saw the app being used

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was by my three-year-old daughter.

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She was using the app

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to count to five in Ojibway
and say a few other words,

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and I just happened to catch it on video.

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Let's take a look.

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That's great, so, with my first app
in the App Store,

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I can tell you that I received
a lot of criticism.

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And the first piece of advice
I got right away was,

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"You should sell the app for 99 cents,
don't release the app for free,

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don't give it away."

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The next piece of advice I got
was from a famous celebrity investor.

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He said, "I don't see
the value in it, I'm out."

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Come to think of it. I forgive them.

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Neither of them realized
the magnitude of language extinction.

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It's estimated that if nothing is done,

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nearly half of 6,000 plus languages
spoken today will disappear

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by the end of the century.

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After releasing the app to the App Store
and distributing it for free,

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I wanted to do more.

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I still felt that that wasn't enough.
I had to do more.

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There were so many other
languages that needed help,

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and I decided to follow
with this just crazy idea,

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just an idea I've always wanted to do.

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"Why not release 
the app source code for free?

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And allow every single tribe

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to download it, and use it,
and distribute it?"

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And I could tell you the same critics
that were giving me advice then,

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called me insane.

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So that's what I did,

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I released the source code online,
and I distributed it for free.

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And I noticed that a lot of the tribes

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started using the source code,

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and my phone started ringing
at weird hours of the night

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from numbers that I didn't recognize.

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When you release something online,

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like anything, like source code,
it truly goes global.

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I found myself talking
with the Sami tribe,

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the tribal government of Norway,

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giving them advice
on how to create a language app.

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A tribe in New Zealand,
a tribe in Australia,

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a tribe in North America as well.

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I started out also training
some of these tribes

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to create their own language apps
and empowering these tribes.

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But right here, at home,

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a grand chief from Northern Manitoba
heard about what I was doing,

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and he shared a story with me
about residential schools.

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Now, I've never been
to residential schools,

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but I can imagine how difficult
it was for him to share.

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If you don't know
what residential schools are

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- or boarding schools,
as they're commonly known as -

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they were government-funded institutions
designed to assimilate the Indian

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often using brutal methods.

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He started out by saying, "The nuns
in residential schools would tell me

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that they were going to kill my language.

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I never realized what they meant
until 30 years later."

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When he found that his son
couldn't speak Cree.

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Now, accomplishing something
of great magnitude

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is by no means a one-person job.

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We need help.

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And that reminds me of a story of
when my youngest daughter was 3 years old

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from the time she could walk,
like any child,

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she always wanted to help.

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So one day, we went grocery shopping,

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and I gave her a bag of oranges
to carry into the house.

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She walked all the way down the street,
and she walked all the way up the walk.

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And when she got 
to the bottom of the stairs,

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she said, "Dad, I can't do it."

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So I walked past her with my hands full,

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and I said, "Yes, you can!
Believe in yourself."

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Moments later, she comes into
the house with nothing in her hands,

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and I said, "Baby, what happened?"

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And she said, "Mum believed in herself!"

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(Laughter)

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And that was the girl
that you saw there in the video.

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Accomplishing something
of great magnitude

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is by no means a one-person job.

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We all have a responsibility
to save these tribal languages.

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Since releasing the Ojibway app,
we've had over 100,000 downloads.

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And since releasing the source code,

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we've had over 40,000 downloads.

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It's estimated that our source code,
and the work that we're doing

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is helping to create over
60 language apps.

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and that is, by no means,
me doing it alone;

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that's the help of teachers,

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that's the help of students,
and that's the help of parents.

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What's it like to get a phone call

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from a tribe that has only
two or three living speakers left?

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Well, I've gotten a few of these calls,

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and I could tell you
that it's very humbling.

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Their languages could be gone tomorrow,
their elders could be gone tomorrow

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taking with them thousands of words,
thousands of phrases,

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and hundreds of years of oral history.

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Together, all those language apps,

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it's estimated that they have
200,000 downloads.

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So the next time you look
in your smartphone,

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why not download an app 
and learn how to speak in a new way?

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You'll be helping to strengthen
global languages today.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)