Storytellers
By Sharon Snowshoe, Gwich’in Tribal Council
"For thirty years, the Gwich'in Tribal Council Department of Culture and Heritage has collected oral history. We have published books and collected audio and video recordings.
It is not always easy to persuade young people to immerse themselves in written records.
So we asked teacher Douglas Cooper if his students would animate an oral history.
First, we introduced students to a great storyteller: Jim Edwards Sittichinli, born in 1908. I read an interview where he described how he lost - and regained - his language.
I asked students to look through our books and create a biography of Jim Edwards SittichinlI. The students found Jim's birth date and the names of his ancestors.
Students listened to Jim's story of The First Axe. We asked: would they build a research file that would help the animator? They would!
In a book written by Father Petitot in 1853, the students found images
of the time when the story took place two centuries ago.
To understand the construction of an early Gwich'in canoe, they contacted Dr. Jean-Luc Pilon, an archeologist who found a collapsed canoe forty years ago. He sent photos.
One student photographed an exhibit case that holds Gwich'in clothing made recently by expert seamstresses, using the techniques employed two centuries ago.
Some students built a research book with images to guide the animator. Others imagined the scene and drew their own images. What did Markus say? 'Thank you, students!'"