Margaret Workman
Born at Aishihik,Yukon, Margaret Workman is a fluent speaker of Southern Tutchone and grew up in a family that spent much of the year living on the land. She is the great granddaughter of Chief Isaac of Aishihik. Her traditional Ägunda (wolf) clan name is Äyedindaya.
Margaret has extensive classroom experience in teaching Southern Tutchone at the Elementary, Senior High School, and College levels. She has taught classes in second-language curriculum development at Yukon College and at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Margaret was responsible for developing the first Athapaskan 11 and 12 language program at F.H.Collins Senior Secondary School in Whitehorse. She holds the Native Language Instructor Certificate and Diploma from Yukon College. Margaret provided the original impetus for the Dákeyi CD ROM project (published 1996) and participated actively in its development, including recording the place descriptions in Southern Tutchone. In 2000 she published Kwädây Kwändür: Traditional Southern Tutchone Stories which she compiled and translated from seven elders.
She is currently developing a dictionary of Southern Tutchone and compiling a database of Southern Tutchone personal names. In 1998 Margaret received an Innovations in Teaching Award from the Yukon Department of Education. In 2001 she was awarded an Associate of Applied Science Degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In June 2004 Margaret retired from the Centre but returns periodically to assist with training and to work on language projects. She is currently working on a Southern Tutchone noun dictionary.