John T'Seleie
Q: Why are oral histories important?
Oral history is the way our people pass on what they know to future generations. It keeps our history alive.
Stories are an important piece of being Dene. When I was growing up, I lived on the land with my parents until I was six years old. I didn't speak English. We trapped to get our supplies, ammunition and tea. Stories were an important part of life on the land.
Q: What role have stories played for you?
If you are Dene, knowing your history gives you a sense of who you are. When I was a boy I was lucky to spend time with my parents. They would get up in the morning, have their tea, and talk.
My grandpa, Nicholas Caesar, was a good storyteller. When he told a moose story he would imitate the sound of a moose. Lots of people came to listen, he told it like a movie.
Q: Do stories offer good advice?
Many of the stories have a theme of human behaviour. They talk about emotions, like anger, and the problems it can cause with others. Stories teach us to avoid that.
Another theme is respect. The stories suggest tools that we can use to get along with one another. That's the key to survival in the Arctic.
Q: Are the stories based on actual events?
We can compare our stories with the records of the Northwest Company in the early years after they came into the Sahtu. There is a story in our language called "The Year There Was No Summer".
In a book I read about the year 1816, when a volcanic eruption caused the temperature to drop around the world. That suggests our story is based on an event more than 200 years ago. To keep these stories alive we need our own historians.
Q: Are there similar stories?
Jim Edward Sittichinli tells a similar story from the point of view of the Gwich'in people. It makes sense. Up to 1840, there was no trading post in the Mackenzie Delta, so people from the Delta had to travel to Good Hope to buy their pots and guns.
The story says that when they arrived in Good Hope they saw white men for the first time. To me, the message is that it was we who discovered the Europeans.