Happy November

Wow! How is it almost the end of November? This year has sped by and the last few weeks have been particularly crazy. There have been a lot of things happening in my life on a personal level lately and a lot of things happening out in the world. I'm just going to take a minute here and send a huge blast of compassion to you all. I find myself more and more aware of the challenges our different experiences and ways of thinking create but I'm going to keep hope that we will find a way to practice compassion and empathy with one another. I'm also going to keep hoping that we can all find a way to come together to protect the water, because truly - no matter what views or beliefs we have, we and our children need water to survive. I'm so grateful for water and I know it's one of those things that is too important to take for granted. It's also something we can all work together for. 

The last few weeks I've been super busy with my course work and preparing my research proposal for my dissertation. Academic writing is so interesting (very different from my creative writing) and I have really valued learning how to go about it.The topic for my dissertation is exploring community-based collaboration in the area of Indigenous language revitalization - which is a passion of mine. It's nice to read about the great work that's going on and it's also nice to be inspired to speak and use the language more (I'm learning Cayuga). 

I've also been working on producing/designing/formatting a book for a friend of mine. It's called "Art of Peace" and was inspired by the story of the Great Law of Peace. She also asked me if I wanted to launch my book Spirit & Intent when hers launches next week and so that's coming up as well, which is super cool. Here's a little poster. We're having the book launch at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario - a place I love and have been going to since I was little because their collection has some of my dad's art in it.  

Last week I did a short reading of one of my stories at a really cool event called Stories From the Land. I was a bit scared - it was my first time reading one of my stories out loud and in public but I was very excited and grateful for the opportunity to be apart of the project. Stories from the Land is a podcast of 12 storytelling events happening in First Nation communities across Turtle Island. The stories are meant to be about our connection to the land, community and culture. Very cool stuff. The stories will eventually be available for listening and I'll be sure to post a link here when they are! 

Ahh. What else? Oh yes! I've been learning to make comics. I've only really done a test one so far but I'm really excited to do more and I know I will get better at them as time goes by. Along the same lines I also started another special project that combines my love of painting, stories, language and videos (and also music in the future). It's here - a short movie about the story of The Vampire Skeleton which I illustrated using a combination of watercolour and shadow puppet theatre. I LOVED this project and have already started working on another. Moving into 2017, I'm going to be doing a lot more of these. Here is some of the art that I made for it:

And lastly, I'm about to finally (after months and months of delays) release a very special YA fantasy book called The Fortune Teller's Daughter. Stay tuned for the cover release next week!

Okay. Phew. I think that is all from me. Busy busy busy times ahead as we move into the last month of the year. I hope you are all well and as always - happy writing! 

S.

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

What Writing Has Taught Me About Learning To Speak Cayuga

Are you interested in learning a language? I am. Here’s the thing: the language I’m most interested in learning is not one you can go to another country and become immersed in. Since immersion is widely believed to be one of, if not the most, successful ways to learn a language this presents some interesting challenges to learning Cayuga. Though it may seem odd, writing—and everything I’ve learned about writing, is helping me to meet them.

Gayogo̲honoˀ (Cayuga) is one of the six languages of the Haudenosaunee People. It is a language that is Indigenous to Turtle Island. And because of the ongoing impacts of colonization and assimilation, it is also a critically endangered language. For example, there are less than a hundred first language Cayuga speakers in my community. Fortunately for us, there are also passionate and hard working people doing their best to vitalize the Cayuga language and they’ve inspired me to do everything I can to become a proficient speaker as well.

Still, despite this very great desire to learn, I didn’t start in earnest until after I had my daughter in May of 2014.  Over the last year I’ve taken classes, read books, listened to recordings and talked about my desire to learn. These things are all beneficial in their own way, but I’ve come to realize these activities alone will not make me a speaker. (At times, they’ve reminded me a little of when I used to talk about wanting to be a writer, without actually making a habit of writing). But what they’ve also done is help me to learn more words, gain more confidence and understand what I must do to become a better speaker-which for me, is just as valuable.

So what exactly do I mean when I say I want to be a better speaker? Well, the language programs in my community utilize the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages guidelines to help evaluate student speaking proficiency, the broad categories of which are: novice, intermediate, advanced, superior, and distinguished. There are also subcategories: low, mid and high. After much consideration, I decided that my long term speaking proficiency goal is Intermediate Low. Once I reach that goal, I will choose a new one. 

In September 2014, I took an informal OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) that placed me firmly in the novice low category. Clearly, I have a long way to go to reach my goal! But I have a plan. It includes classes, books, transcriptions, master-apprentice sessions, TPR, writing stories in Cayuga and much, much more. I’ll be blogging about these more in the future as a way to share resources with others who are learning Cayuga and also to keep me motivated.

So, I said that writing has helped me to become a better speaker. It’s true, and here's how. One of the simple rules of becoming a writer that everyone from Stephen King to Neil Gaiman to my wonderful Twitter friends has had to learn is this: to become a writer, you have to write. The same thing applies to learning a language. If you want to become a speaker, you have to speak. It’s literally that simple.

Don’t get me wrong. There are challenges. Huge challenges. Gigantic obstacles that can seem impossible to overcome. But guess what? You can overcome them.

When I first started writing my novel, it felt like an impossible task. I wanted it so badly but I couldn’t imagine how I would ever find the time to do it. But I did. I carved out a little bit of time every day and little by little, my story grew until my first draft was finished. Of course, there were good days and bad days. (Raise your hand if you’ve written five thousand words one day and only two hundred the next).

I’ve had good and bad days learning to speak, too. Thankfully, writing has already shown me that patience and perseverance can help you achieve things you didn’t think you could and that sometimes, you have to start small and go one word at a time. That’s perfectly okay. For writing and speaking. After all, every word you learn and then speak helps you to become a better speaker. And just as they do in writing: those words add up.

And you know what? It’s completely awesome when they do.

Nyo:ˀ dęjigyada:tgęˀ!

Odadrihonyanisoh

Sgę:no! Indigenous Language Challenge 2014 Ft. Ganyadę:

Sgę:no! Gadewayesta Gayogo̲hono. i: agyaˀda:sdǫh ne:gyeh! #IndigenousLanguageChallenge2014 in Cayuga (Gayogo̲hono)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nkMNdJOvNM

Nya:węh!

O.

The Age Old Magic of Naming

“Our native languages are of the land. The land gives us an identity; we also give it an identity with the naming of places.” - Basil Johnston, Anishinaabe writer & storyteller

Naming is one of the most difficult tasks I experience as a writer. Names speak volumes about our characters, about who they are and how they connect with their environments in our stories. What’s in a name? Shakespeare’s Juliet asked this question when she found out that she couldn’t be with Romeo on account of his. I agree with Juliet. It’s certainly not the sole basis upon which to prejudice a relationship. But for me, what Basil is saying is actually more important, it goes deeper - names denote relationships.

This reciprocity, this mutual locating of identity between us and the land is essential.

I’ve met so many different people who talk or understand a different aspect of it. Those who are savvy about the historical experiences of Indigenous Peoples know legal aspects of it. They understand how the Papal Bulls were utilized as a malicious tool to lay claim to the lands of Indigenous Peoples. Scholars of this ilk have been trained to recognize the patterns of extinguishment at work in the everyday. They see how the renaming of places became part of the settler colonial narrative, a means to erase and subvert the relationships that Indigenous Peoples have with the land by calling them something different altogether. They’ve also started numerous projects to reclaim those relationships and discover those places anew.

But political and legal knowledge notwithstanding, many of them also know it in a spiritual way as well, as a truth. My ancestors knew that we are in an interdependent relationship with Creation. That what we do to the lands, we do to ourselves. That it’s important that we continue to make offerings of gratitude to the earth, that we continue to say kind things to the water even when it looks murky. They passed this knowledge and understanding forward because they realized it was important that I understand that they were saying real and true things. It’s not a gimmick, a logo, or a marketing ploy. It’s insight about a relationship, and like any other relationship – it requires maintenance.

The language to express these relationships are (at least to me & many other people I know, both younger and older) just as Basil explains them to be - “a precious heritage”. Those who know the language intimately get to experience something, something that can’t be known by reading about a First Nation or our culture on a Wikipedia page. Intuitively, I know that learning the language and speaking it as often as I can will enrich the whole of me: as an individual, a spirit, a writer, an educator - even a parent.

Basil writes about this in “One Generation From Extinction”, found in a collection of his essays called Think Indian: Languages are Beyond Price. Here he urges scholars, teachers, and writers to learn the language as well.

“Without language scholars, writers and teachers will have no access to the depth and width of tribal understanding, but must continue to labour as they have done these many years under the impression that ‘Indian’ stories are nothing more than fairy tales or folk lore, fit only for juvenile minds. For scholars and academics Nanabush, Raven, Glooscap, Weesaukeechauk, and other mythological figures will ever remain ‘tricksters’, culture heroes, deities whose misadventures were dreamed into being only for the amusement of children...

Just consider the fate of ‘Indian’ stories written by those who knew nothing of the language and never did hear any of the stories in their entirety or in their original version but derived everything that they knew of their subject from second, third and even fourth diluted sources. Is it any wonder then that the stories in Indian Legends of Canada by E.E. Clark or Manaboozho by T.B. Leekly are so bland and devoid of sense. Had the authors known the stories in their ‘Indian’ sense and flavour, perhaps they might have infused their versions with more wit and infusion.”

This is a particularly beautiful set of paintings by Bruce Beardy which were made to accompany an Anishnaabe language teaching document. Bruce coordinates a Native Language Teacher Progam at Lakehead University. I met him only once but was very inspired by these paintings and the entire project these paintings were for.

Perhaps this is why I struggle to name characters and places too, for that matter. Even in writing, I’m conscious of how important these relationships are and how important language is - even when I’m at my computer making up stories, this awareness is within me. It matters for some reason I can’t explain and I kind of shudder when people get it wrong, when they write things that disregard this relationship so absolutely that I wonder if they even realizing they are doing it. I had this experience lately where a book I was reading suddenly and completely trampled on my world-view and it was just such a turn off. It might have been unintentional (it seemed unintentional), but it still rankled and that’s okay. If anything, it made me happy that I’m writing my own stories, that I’m learning a language and that I’m trying to connect my truth to the page. And once I do, I’ll return to the example I mentioned and talk about it more. But first, I need to write. And yes, I just might get it wrong too and that will be okay as well. It’s a risk I’m willing to take with a creative project. It’s a risk I’m willing to take to let my daughter and other kids know that our worldview is exciting and sophisticated and epic and respectful. Ganohonyohk. It’s all real, yo.

Happy Writing,

S