Roxanna Thompson
Northern News Services
Friday, April 6, 2007

FORT SIMPSON - In an effort to provide more Slavey language material to schools, the Deh Cho Divisional Board of Education has become its own publishing house.

From March 19-23, eight language instructors representing schools from the Deh Cho gathered in Fort Simpson to assist in specializing material for their individual communities. Each instructor translated five children's books into Slavey.

Eight different copies of a single book are necessary because of regional language differences, said Andy Norwegian, a language specialist with the Deh Cho Divisional Board of Education.

"We have problems sharing material," he said.

Because the Deh Cho is such a large region, each community has different dialects. This means if a book is translated into the Fort Simpson Slavey dialect and sent to Fort Liard they will have to paste in pieces of paper with their own text, said Norwegian. Bringing together all the language instructors to work on texts ensures the books will be appropriate for their schools.

In-house publishing also has the added advantage of being immediately accessible. If books are sent out for publishing they're all printed in the Fort Simpson dialect and because publishers don't always have Slavey experts, it means the text might contain mistakes, said Norwegian.

In-house publishing also saves on costs because it's expensive to develop aboriginal language material. Moving even a small book through a publishing house is a big process, he said.

The board has always taken the approach of developing their own material but it has previously been sent out for publication.

"This way really cuts down on a lot of costs," Norwegian said.

Translating books into Slavey at a local level is a good step, said Wanda Norwegian, a language instructor at the Louie Norwegian school in Jean Marie River. Often there aren't enough Slavey books classrooms, so this will help fill the need, she said.

"I think the kids will enjoy the books we made," said Norwegian.

Translating the books was sometimes hard when you don't know one of the words or how to say it in the language, said Norwegian.

Melaine Simba, a teacher's assistant at the Kakisa Lake school, said she found the process interesting. She also found some parts challenging.

"Speaking it and putting it in your own language is hard," said Simba about the translation process.

The end products of the workshop were five small books bound with plastic bindings. Five copies of each book will be sent to the schools.

Students will soon be reading titles including I Love Moose Meat, Grandpa's Rubber Boots, My Dad Likes to Drive His Boat, I Like Rabbit Soup and I See and Feel the Wind.

The copyright for the pictures and text of the books were purchased from a Cree immersion school in Alberta.

Many First Nation groups take a sharing approach to school material, said Andy Norwegian. They buy the rights and change the text to suit their language.

In the future, Norwegian hopes to use pictures made locally. Neil Kotchea, a high school student and artist from Echo Dene school, in Fort Liard, was also at the workshop to draw some illustrations that can be used for more books.

Another step will be to record people reading the books and burn the readings onto CDs, which will be included with each book, said Norwegian.