Every day, Gitxsan Hereditary Chief Sim’oo’git Geel (Catherine Blackstock) completes a word-guessing game and shares her score with friends and family.

“Maadim was the word yesterday, which is the ‘snow that’s falling,'” she said, looking at her smartphone screen. 

The game in question is titled Not Wordle – Gitksan, modelled after the popular online game where players are given six tries to guess a five-letter word — but features words in Gitxsanimx, the language of the Gitxsan Nation in northwestern B.C.

Chief Geel says the daily challenge is building her vocabulary in a language she’s not fluent in.

“I want to get it … that’s how everybody gets