Fort Good Hope (Dec 20/04) - The community of Fort Good Hope has created a calendar that tells the life stories of a few of the area's elders.

It's the third such calendar photographer Kathy Thornhill has been involved in. She took pictures of the elders while language co-ordinator Alphonsine McNeely interviewed them in Slavey about their lives.

Jeannie Chinna is one of several Fort Good Hope elders whose life stories are included in a 2005 calendar, which turned into a community project. - photo courtesy of Kathy Thornhill

"I couldn't understand a word they said, but their facial expressions were magical," said Thornhill.

"In watching through the lens, I was seeing them as teenagers and as young people going through the experiences they were sharing."

The project was funded by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

Children at the school were also involved in helping to make the calendar. They were given the Slavey name for each month and asked to make a drawing of it. One drawing was then scanned in as the background watermark for that month.

The two oldest participants in the project were Jeannie Chinna and Dorothy Cotchilla. Cotchilla is a few weeks older than Chinna. Records at the Roman Catholic mission estimate they are 94-years-old, but they may be closer to 100.

McNeely said Cotchilla recounted a story her grandmother had told her about how she got her Dene name. Cotchilla's Dene name, Be'hshi, is the short form of a phrase meaning "you brought plenty of food."

When Cotchilla was born, her community was running low on food, but shortly after the women who helped deliver her called out to Cotchilla's father to tell him he had a baby daughter, he spotted and shot a moose.

Cotchilla also related a story about an encounter with a grizzly bear while she was out berry picking. An old man warned her grizzlies were dangerous, but said they weren't a threat to him, as his dogs were enough to scare bears away.

When, sure enough, a grizzly did appear, the old man froze with fright. Cotchilla explained the lesson of the story.

"She said that one should never talk smart about wildlife," said McNeely. "They can hear everything."

Chinna described herself as something of a tomboy.

"She said 'I was always independent, the only girl among many boys,'" recalled the translator.

Chinna shared some sad stories about traumas she experienced and talked about how she would camp out by herself, setting snares away from Fort Good Hope, as a way of seeking healing.

After her husband died in the 1970s, she went back out on the land and set up camp, trapping muskrats and preparing hides. Chinna is an excellent seamstress and sewed while McNeely interviewed her for the calendar, though she said her eyesight is failing.

The calendar was launched with a community feast in Fort Good Hope last Tuesday night and a slide show accompanied by drummers.

Each elder received one of Thornhill's photos inside a picture frame decorated by the school's kindergarten class.

Thornhill hopes the success of the project might inspire other schools to create elders' calendars of their own.