This article first appeared on Bookbird, in April 2004, and a reduced version is reprinted here with permission from the auhor. For the full article, please visit FindArticles.com

"[The job of writers] is to hold up prisms (mirrors are overrated) so we can admire ourselves from different angles, colors, and perspectives". Thomas King, Introduction, Prairie Fire

Indigenous Languages and Publishing

One of the most harmful effects of colonialism was the loss of Indigenous languages. In Australia, out of around 250 languages spoken before the arrival of Europeans only around a third are still spoken; a similar situation applies in Canada, where the historian Olive Dickason notes that of the fifty to seventy languages spoken at the time of first contact with Europeans, "several are now extinct...and most of the others are endangered, some seriously." The extinction of languages involves the loss of rituals, songs, narratives, and cultural practices, and thus the recuperation and deployment of languages is an important focus of Indigenous publishers. Magabala has published several dual-language texts in English and Indigenous languages-for instance, Tjarany Roughtail (1992), by Gracie Greene, Joe Tramacchi, and Lucille Gill, is written in English and Kukatja, a language from the north of Western Australia; and Aidan Laza and Alick Tipoti's Kuiyku Mabaigal: Wau and Sobai (Head-hunters: Waii and Sobai; 1998) uses a combination of English and dialogue in Kala Lagaw Ya, the language of the western islands of the Torres Strait. In Canada, Theytus has published a Cree-English text, Beth Cuthand and Mary Longman's The Little Duck (1999), including a Cree symbol version, and Pemmican, Canada's only Metis publishing house, has taken the important step of publishing Li Minoush (The cat; 2001), a children's book in English and Michif, the mixed language (not a pidgin or a creole) spoken by Plains Metis and comprising French nouns and noun phrases used in conjunction with Plains Cree verbal systems.

Li Minoush, written by Bonnie Murray, illustrated by Sheldon Dawson and translated by Rita Flamand, is a groundbreaking book because Michif is predominantly a spoken language, so that Flamand's translation involved the development of an orthography to represent Michif sound systems. In addition, the narrative thematizes the issue of endangered languages through its story about a young boy, Thomas, who asks his mother for a pet kitten. Because in Metis culture animals tend to be viewed in relation to their functions in hunting, trapping, and such activities, his mother is at first taken aback by his request. When she agrees, she suggests that the cat should be called Minoush, which means "cat" in Michif, so that Thomas's acquisition of his new pet incorporates his introduction to the Michif language. The final illustration shows Thomas standing in front of his classmates showing them his kitten and telling him "how Minoush got its name" (31). Li Minoush provides Metis readers with the experience of seeing in print a language that has existed only in spoken mode; at the same time, the issue of endangered languages is foregrounded as a serious cultural question to engage all readers.

Because mainstream publishers have often tended to regard Indigenous dialects of English as inferior and full of errors, they have frequently reworked texts by Indigenous people to render them "correct," or ghost-writers have been employed to convert oral narratives into standard written forms. In the words of the Aboriginal novelist Mudrooroo, "Indigenous Englishes... threaten the hegemony of a standard English." In fact, dialects such as Aboriginal English in Australia and Red English in North America have their own grammatical features and vocabulary and are stigmatized because they are associated with speakers on the margins of mainstream culture, not because of any intrinsic limitation.

Indigenous publishers value and maintain Indigenous dialects of English, since the forms and expressions of these languages encode Indigenous values and conceptual frameworks. The Australian text Down the Hole (IAD Press, 2000), by Edna Tantjingu Williams and Eileen Wani Wingfield, thematizes the sorry episode in Australian history when Aboriginal children (especially those of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry) were removed from their families to be brought up in institutions, and covers some of the same territory as the film "The Rabbit-Proof Fence." The first-person narrative tells the story of Aboriginal children living in the remote opal-mining town of Goober Pedy, in South Australia, and the tactics their parents used to prevent their capture by representatives of the state who regularly visited Aboriginal communities and removed children by force (...)

Retellings of Traditional Narratives

(...) retellings of traditional narratives by Indigenous publishers boldly reclaim narratives that have been lost or that have been compromised through incorporation into Western genres and schemata at the same time that Indigenous authors and illustrators produce stories about contemporary characters living in non-traditional contexts.

I do not have the space here to discuss issues of appropriation, but my position on retellings of traditional stories of Indigenous peoples is that they are best carried out by the groups and individuals to whom such stories belong, and that the processes of retelling should accord with Indigenous practices of authorization, custodianship of stories, and proper attribution of their custodians or tellers. Greg Young-Ing, the Managing Editor of Theytus, lists the following principles as they apply to Theytus:

* utilizing principles of the Oral Tradition within the editorial process;
* respecting, establishing, and defining Aboriginal colloquial forms of English;
* incorporating Aboriginal traditional protocol in considering the appropriateness of presenting certain aspects of culture; and
* consulting and soliciting approval of Elders and traditional leaders in the publishing of sacred cultural material.

The last of Young-Ing's points is crucial, for the history of publishing and academic work in Australia and Canada is littered with instances where sacred texts have been inappropriately made public or used without acknowledgement.

A text that exemplifies the protocols used at Theytus is Kou-Skelowh/We Are the People: A Trilogy of Okanagan Legends (Penticton, 1984), illustrated by Barbara Marchand, an artist of Okanagan Native ancestry. The stories were first published in 1984 following consultation with the Okanagan Elders Council, who gave permission for the retelling and approved English translations to be used by Okanagan children. When Theytus decided to publish the collection with new illustrations, the publishers again approached the Elders Council. Permission to publish was given, with the understanding that no single person was to be named as author or owner of the legends, or to derive financial gain from the publication; copyright is vested in the Okanagan Tribal Council.

The first story in the trilogy, How Food Was Given, tells how, before the coming of humans to the earth, the four Chiefs-Bear, Salmon, Bitterroot, and Saskatoon-met to determine how to enable humans to live (...).This story encodes key Okanagan values such as the following: that people should pay tribute to the animals and plants that die to give them life; that no creature is too small to be of significance to the community; and the importance given to cooperation and mutual support. The use of proper names such as Skimheest (Bear) and Enteeteegh (Salmon) interpolates Okanagan language into the English translation, so making a claim for the story as part of a specifically Okanagan tradition.

Contemporary Narratives and Indigenous Publishers

Finally, I noted earlier that Indigenous publishers produce both traditional stories and works that locate characters in contemporary settings. The latter play an important role in supporting the identity-formation of Indigenous children, and the example I will use here is Magabala's Goanna Jumps High (1999), a humorous fantasy written by children at a remote school in Urandangi, in Queensland. All the children except one are Aboriginal, and the story developed out of a series of storytelling workshops run by Daryll Bellingham, a Brisbane storyteller, and Narelle Oliver, a well-known artist. The narrative is a tall tale in which the Urandangi children train a goanna ("lizard") to jump great heights by feeding it grasshoppers. The goanna's jumping steadily improves until it wins the inter-school sports competition for Urandangi. Having become famous by appearing on television, the children and their goanna are invited to visit the mining town of Mt. Isa to see if their goanna will jump over the main smokestack. It does so, but plunges to the ground and is squashed flat. The last lines of the story read, "Oh well. At least we can have a good feed of goanna!" (23).

This story is enlivened by the use of Aboriginal English, by the lino-cut illustrations created by the children, and by its adherence to the tall story genres that are common in Australian and Aboriginal storytelling. Its laconic humor and understated tone are true to Aboriginal oral traditions, and in its role as a text for beginning readers it offers Aboriginal children an affirming experience as they encounter a variety of English and a mode of storytelling in which they are at home.

It is often the case that non-Indigenous readers encountering texts produced by Indigenous publishers experience a sense of cultural difference, and this is as it should be. The important contribution that Indigenous publishers make to children's literature is to produce works that are indeed different in regard to values, preoccupations, and narrative forms. Such texts, expressing Indigenous cultures from the "different angles, colors, and perspectives" to which Thomas King alludes, affirm and support Indigenous worldviews and modes of life.

Posted August 2005