Gimaa Radio was the brain-child of Carl Beam, a residential school survivor and artist who recognized how important the Ojibwe language was and what its retention meant for a person’s identity, culture, confidence and self-expression. Beam, his wife Ann and two friends developed the idea of the Anishinabemowin radio station to help listeners improve their fluency in “the original people’s language” and to serve as a language and cultural recovery tool.