Skeena Indigenous is an open source fork of the Skeena humanist sans typeface designed for Microsoft by John Hudson and Paul Hanslow. The fonts have been extended using an indigenous-first approach to support the wide range of diacritic letters and mark positioning required for the diverse Latin orthographies of North American Indigenous languages, including variant forms for some languages. The fonts include a superset of Latin diacritics for European settler languages, but these are treated as secondary to indigenous typographic norms.

The idea for a new, indigenous-first version of Skeena emerged early in the discussions of an ad hoc group convened by Microsoft’s Advanced Reading Technologies team in late 2022. This group was initially focused on Coast Salish language support, including not only fonts but keyboard layouts, localization and other aspects of language processing, and community engagement to identify the needs and preferences of language keepers and those involved in linguistic preservation and revitalization. Version 1.00 of the fonts, released in the Spring of 2025, supports a large number of languages across Canada and the continental United States.

Related types:
Skeena
Skeena Display

Microsoft font family: TrueType OpenType format only.