Our First Cayuga Language Comic

Hi everyone! 

I am really, really excited to share a sneak peek of a project I’ve been working on for the last few weeks with the help of my wonderful husband, Kehte Deer. (He wrote the story and did such an awesome job!). 

This is our first real attempt at working on something that has always held a special interest for both of us—a comic/graphic novel style representation of a Haudenosaunee story told in the language. I know our comics will only get better as my art and language skills improve, and even though it's our first effort, I still wanted to share it with you!

My book, The Vampire Skeleton, is very loosely inspired by this story and when researching that book, I had come across a number of different versions of the story. The comic adaptation is inspired by a story J.N.B. Hewitt collected in November of 1896, a version of which my husband discovered this past summer and shared with me. This also makes November 2016, the 120th anniversary of this particular telling. Very cool! 

I am still learning about the process of making comics (and will probably redraw this one in the future), but I was fortunate to get a lot of help from my sister and frequent collaborator Alyssa, who added some really great elements to the work. Making comics is one of her dreams as well, so this whole project has been an awesome learning experience for all of us. 

In honour of this special 120th anniversary, we will be releasing more cool things that we’ve created through the month of November as well as some behind-the-scenes pictures and blogs on our production company website (www.spiritandintent.com), Twitter & Facebook page.

Please visit us to make sure you don’t miss these super awesome posts :). And here's a PDF of the story as well!

Nya:węh and we hope you like it! 

S.

THE VAMPIRE SKELETON