The Immersive Preservation Project

Why This Matters

Each passing elder is an irreversible loss. The tools to preserve what they carry have never been stronger.

When a language keeper passes without being recorded, there is no way back. The words, the songs, the stories they carried exist nowhere else on Earth — and across Canada, we are losing them at an alarming rate. This is more than words: language is the key to everything. Ceremonies cannot be passed on without it. Preserving the language preserves ceremony, ceremony carries the culture, and the culture leads back to the land.

Oral tradition alone can no longer carry that weight — when the voice stops, it's gone. Recording it, at the highest quality that exists, means it never has to be.

For the first time, communities have access to immersive Dolby Atmos archiving. For a century, documentation meant flat, two-channel stereo: the elder's voice survived, but the circle of singers, the room, the sound of the territory — all of it was lost. Recorded in spatial audio, each drum keeps its place. The territory surrounds you. Future generations who hear a spatial recording of their great-grandmother don't hear her through a speaker — they sit beside her.

The recording becomes a place, not just a document — built to be re-rendered into technologies not yet invented, for the next hundred years.

Proof of Concept

It started with one album.

2026 Juno Award Nominee

Nakota Tayhunyabi

YB Nakota · 2025

Produced by the IPP team — a drum circle and healing song album, recorded and mixed in full Dolby Atmos, narrated by the artist's grandmother speaking in an endangered language. Proudly the first Indigenous language preservation and ceremony album ever captured in Dolby Atmos, it earned a Juno Award nomination and national attention from the Juno committee and CBC alike.

Immersive audio isn't just a technical achievement in this context — it's a cultural one. With that recognition came a realization: this quality and format belong to the mission of preserving culture and language — not as a one-time project, but as a national initiative.

The origin of the IPP

The Program

Five pillars. One living archive.

These pillars are a menu, not a package. Every community chooses what matters most — document a language before it's lost, record the musical talent in your nation, design an immersive installation for your cultural centre, or build toward all five. Your priorities shape the program. We bring the tools, and the choice is always yours.

Language

Your fluent speakers, recorded in spatial audio — giving your nation the resources to teach the language your way, in your classrooms, your programs, and your homes.

Music

Your traditional songs — drum circles, round dances, the voices of your singers — captured at the highest quality that exists, so they can be taught, shared, and passed to the next generation instead of lost with their keepers.

Education

Your recordings become teaching tools in your hands — powering your schools, your youth programs, and your language classes, with our support whenever you want it.

Experience

Leverage your immersive recordings to create interactive installations at cultural centres, events, and community spaces — allowing people to step inside a ceremony, a landscape, a living language.

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Your Community

We are selecting our founding pilot communities now. Tell us what preservation means to your nation — and help shape the program from the ground up.

Become a pilot community

How It Works

From first conversation to living archive.

Communities never have to figure out what to do — we bring a clear, respectful process that adapts to your needs, your protocols, and your priorities.

Step 01

The Conversation

We meet with leadership and knowledge keepers to hear what preservation means to your community — and which pillars matter most.

Step 02

The Plan

Together we design the visit: who is recorded, what is shared, and where — on territory, in your cultural centre, in the places the knowledge belongs. Every step is shaped with your knowledge keepers, leadership, and elders, guided by your community's protocols.

Step 03

Capturing History

Our remote Dolby Atmos studio comes to you. Elders, singers, drum circles, ceremonies, and the sound of the land itself — captured at the highest quality that exists.

Step 04

The Handoff

Every project ends in a formal archival handoff: your recordings, in every format, owned outright by your community — with guidance for caring for the archive across generations.

The Delivery Promise

Your archive. Forever yours.

Every community receives full ownership of their recordings. Every project culminates in a formal archival handoff — the gold standard in archival audio, delivered in every format that exists today and capable of being re-rendered into technologies not yet invented. This is an archive owned by its people.

Lossless Stereo

Universal compatibility across every device and platform.

5.1 Surround

Broadcast and institutional use — compatible with existing cultural centre infrastructure.

Binaural

Full immersive listening through any headphones, including a teenager's earbuds. The format that reaches youth.

ADM Dolby Atmos Master

The complete object-based recording: a time capsule re-renderable into formats not yet invented. Built for the next hundred years.

Common Questions

Your recordings, your way.

What can we do with our recordings?

Anything you choose — they're yours. Communities use their recordings to build language and culture programs for their schools and youth, archive the voices of their elders for future generations, and create interactive installations at community centres, events, and outreach programs. And you don't need it all figured out — the IPP team helps you find the most impactful ways to use your media, aligned with your goals, whether that's purely archival or building interactive educational resources.

Who owns the recordings?

Your community — solely and exclusively, by written agreement. We keep nothing, use nothing, and hold no rights to the material. Every recording is handed over in full at the end of every project.

Is any of this used for AI?

No. Your recordings are never fed into an algorithm, never used to train AI, never sold, and never collected or retained by us in any form. That commitment is made in writing before a single word is recorded.

We already have old recordings — tapes, videos, stereo files. Can you work with those?

Yes. Existing media can be restored and transformed into immersive formats — an old recording of a song, a story, or a voice can become the heart of an installation your community can step inside.

Who decides what gets recorded?

Your community does. Everything begins with consultation and consent — your leadership, knowledge keepers, and the people being recorded dictate what is captured, what is shared, and what stays private. Privacy and cultural respect come before any microphone is turned on.

Who We Are

World-class technology. Community-held trust.

The Immersive Preservation Project pairs the community relationships and cultural leadership that make this work possible with one of Canada's premier Dolby Atmos facilities — a program built alongside Indigenous communities from day one.

Program Director

Creators Path · Drezus

Creators Path has quickly risen to become the top organization in Canada for Indigenous education, mentorship, and youth work — visiting reserves nationally with programming communities trust.

Founder Drezus brings deep ties across the country and the life experience that makes him one of the most trusted people to work alongside communities on this important mission.

Indigenous Owned & Led

Technical Partner

NOVA Studios · Jamie Kuse

Jamie Kuse is a Juno Award-winning audio engineer and producer, and founder of the Emmy Award-winning NOVA Studios — one of Canada's premier Dolby Atmos facilities. His productions have amassed over 1 billion streams worldwide.

Rooted in the Indigenous music scene, Jamie produced Snotty Nose Rez Kids' Juno Award-winning Red Future and received a 2026 Juno nomination for Nakota Tayhunyabi.

Juno & Emmy Award-Winning Audio Experts

Get In Touch

Build this with us.

We are in the program's founding phase — selecting pilot communities, consulting with knowledge keepers, and shaping the archive around what communities actually need. Whether you represent a nation, a cultural organization, a funder, or an artist: your voice belongs in this. We'd be honoured to talk.

Email

jamie@ipproject.ca

Mailing Address

NOVA Studios — Immersive Preservation Project
340 Brooksbank Ave, Unit 220
North Vancouver, BC

Preserving Indigenous languages, culture & music — for generations unborn.