SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Growing up in Yellowknife, Carla Taylor remembers hearing all kinds of indigenous legends from her mother and aunties.

Carla Taylor reads Raven Returned the Sun during storytime with her son Lyrik Taylor, left, and her daughter Raeya Taylor at their grandmother's house near Calgary. - photo courtesy of Scott Willoughby

For years she's wanted to retell them to through illustrations.

Now Taylor is bringing a famous indigenous legend to life through a book commissioned by Yellowknife Education District No. 1 (Yk1) that aims to preserve the North Slavey language while putting a twist on a story called How Raven Stole the Sun.

"It's an important piece for me ... to be able to preserve the language and share traditional knowledge with the kids and the youth and anyone who reads it," said Taylor, who now lives in Sherwood Park, Alta.

According to Yk1 aboriginal co-ordinator Scott Willoughby, the school board puts together backpacks full of school supplies and a book for kindergarten students each year.

The board tries to include an indigenous-language story when it can, he said, although they can sometimes be hard to find. So the school board decided to commission one itself this year.

When Taylor heard Yk1 was looking to illustrate a traditional Dene legend, she put a proposal together with her cousin Christal Doherty.

Doherty then contacted an elder in Deline who knows traditional legends and asked her to retell the story orally, a common way of telling stories in many indigenous communities, Taylor said.

Doherty then worked with a translator and recorded the story in her own words.

While the raven is often seen as a trickster in many indigenous cultures, Taylor said, the raven works to help the people in this story, which is why her cousin put a twist its original name.

"She didn't feel like it really did justice to raven, because he's actually the one who returned the sun to the people," Taylor said.

"Once she'd written it, I started to do the illustrations," Taylor said.

"I used sepia ink and acrylic and just kind of drew on my imagination for the images."

She said she had images of the story in her head from hearing it told to her by her mother as a child. The result is a colourful book geared toward students between the ages of five and 12.

"It was exciting to put them into reality," she said.

Although she doesn't speak North Slavey herself, her mother is from Deline and speaks the language fluently, Taylor said.

"It's important for me to recall these legends and tap into that history, my own ancestry and be able to share that with my children," she said.

For those learning the language, the book is written in both North Slavey and English, with some words written in bold to help readers learn the translation.

"The purpose of the book is to revitalize the language," said Willoughby.

Language revitalization is one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 recommendations.

Willoughby said that while people say indigenous languages are dying, an elder he spoke to believes differently.

"He said the languages aren't really dead. They're just sleeping and they need someone to wake them up," Willoughby said, adding people are speaking indigenous languages at home but the book brings a modern approach to helping people learn it.

He said he has already shared copies with the NWT Literacy Council and plans to make more available at the Yellowknife Book Cellar.

If all goes well, Yk1 could write more books like this in the future - one for every linguistic region in the NWT, Willoughby said.

Taylor said most indigenous communities have an oral tradition of passing legends down, but technology is giving way to new methods of sharing those stories.

"I think in the world we're living in - with media, writing and all sorts of access to the Internet - it's important for us to use those mediums to communicate the legends, the traditional stories to the youth and to the people," Taylor said.

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