As Grandmother Said

“Isúh Áníi: Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká áa Guunijà / As Grandmother Said: The Narratives of Bessie Meguinis”
As narrated by Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká Bessie Meguinis and Ninàghá Tsitł’á Willie Little Bear
Retold by Dit’óní Didlíshí Bruce Starlight
Illustrated by Treasa Starlight
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.95 ISBN 9780889779853

The University of Regina Press is doing important work with their commitment to honouring the traditional languages, legends and cultures of Canada’s First Peoples, and the list of books in their First Nations Language Readers series recently grew again with the landmark publication of Isúh Áníi: Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká áa Guunijà / As Grandmother Said: The Narratives of Bessie Meguinis. This is the first book to be published in Tsuut’ina (“a critically endangered language”) in more than one hundred years. It contains nine traditional narratives originally narrated by Elders Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká Bessie Meguinis (1883-1987) and her son, Ninàghá Tsitł’á Willie Little Bear (1912-1989). Here they’re retold by Dit’óní Didlíshí Bruce Starlight, the grandson of Bessie Meguinis. Dr. Starlight spent much of his early childhood with Meguinis, listening to her stories and teachings as he recovered from tuberculosis, and with the help of colleague Dr. Christopher Cox—and chapter-beginning, black and white illustrations by Treasa Starlight—he shares invaluable knowledge of this tonal language that less than twenty people now speak.

According to The Canadian Encyclopedia (online version), “The Tsuut’ina language (often known as Sarcee) is an Athabaskan/Dene language of northern Canada,” and “Today, Tsuut’ina territory is in southern Alberta, bordering the southwestern city limits of Calgary.”

In the book’s foreword, Dr. Arok Wolvengrey,Professor of Algonquian Languages and Linguistics at First Nations University of Canada, writes “it is my hope that this book will be one small yet crucial piece in the multifaceted approach required in the Tsuu’tina’s efforts to retain and revitalize their beautiful language”. This collaborative publication is a “teaching tool” that incudes a linguistic analysis and a comprehensive Tsuut’ina-English glossary.

The stories themselves cover diverse subjects. In “How the Earth was Created—The Old Man and the Muskrat,” there’s a flood and an “Old Man” who, Noah-like, built a boat for “All of the animals”. He directed first a beaver, then a muskrat to “try to grab some dirt from the bottom of the water”. The muskrat succeeded in returning with “a little bit of dirt in his paws,” and from this, and with the help of “a fast-running bird,” the earth became “whole again”.

The matter-of-fact “Buffalo Lake” concerns the water that flowed “uncontrollably” from a slaughtered buffalo’s bladder to create Buffalo Lake, beneath which “the buffalo turned into an island there”.

There are narratives about how the brave Tsuut’ina separated into northern and southern peoples; a tale about the Tsuut’ina meeting the Blackfoot (“they all intermarried … we were all initiated into different societies and ceremonies”), and a story about how a buffalo gifted a young man with the “holy” abode that is a teepee, and how the teepee is structurally representative of a buffalo.

I could almost hear the speakers in the above stories and others—about the Beaver Bundle, water monsters, Thunderbirds and Black Soldiers—and credit the entire crew responsible for sharing, translating and preserving these stories, word for word. How musical it must have been to hear them in their original Tsuut’ina.

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