MiÂ’kmaq stories unearthed (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Mi’kmaq stories unearthed

Author-editor Peter Sanger, working with translator Elizabeth Paul and
illustrator Alan Syliboy, brings to light a pair of texts — tales from the
first nation’s distant past

By JODI DELONG
Sun. Nov 4 - 7:33 AM
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Books/976555.html

[photo inset - Mi’kmaq artist Alan Syliboy, shown in this photo from 2000,
has illustrated Peter Sanger’s book The Stone Canoe: Two Lost Mi’kmaq
Texts. (Ted Pritchard / Herald)]

"FINDING these two lost Mi’kmaq texts is the equivalent in our culture of
finding a new play by Shakespeare."

Peter Sanger has his listeners’ full attention as he speaks these words.
We’re in a room of the Vaughn Library at Acadia University, where Gaspereau
Press is launching its newest book. The Stone Canoe: Two Lost Mi’kmaq Texts
is described as a story about two stories and their travels through the
written record.

The stories’ journey into print combined a wealth of talents: Elizabeth Paul
as translator, Peter Sanger as author and editor, and Alan Syliboy as
illustrator. Together, these three unique individuals have brought to life
two stories that were languishing, unremembered and unread, in Acadia’s
archives.

The stories differ in that the older of the two, designated in the book as
"from the mouth of Susan Barss" is a legend much like those found in other
cultures. It’s the story of Little Thunder, a young man whose parents send
him out to search for a wife. Accompanied by Wolverine, the trickster of
Mi’kmaq culture, and several other equally wonderful characters, the young
man borrows Gluskap’s stone canoe to go and search for a wife, which he
eventually finds.

The second story, from the mouth of Old Man Stevens, is said to be a "real
story" about a woman abandoned by her husband on an island. The woman
manages to survive until spring, when she is rescued by others from her
home community, and upon her return "does not want her husband. So the
husband leaves."

The story finishes "This is a true story. It is not a legend. It is a true
story about the old Indians."

To understand the backdrop for the book’s genesis, Peter Sanger wrote two
essays that begin and end The Stone Canoe. These take us on historical trip
to the mid-19th century and the work of Silas Tertius Rand.

Rand was a unique character in our province’s history: the son of a New
England planter was born not far from Kentville in 1810; he left school at
an early age and became a stonemason, at the same time hiring tutors to
further his education.

In his mid-teens he had a religious awakening, a phenomenon not uncommon in
those times, and became a Baptist minister by the time he was in his
mid-twenties. Determined to convert the Mi’kmaq to Christianity, ignoring
the fact that they were already converted to Roman Catholicism, Rand set
about learning their language so that he could translate the Bible into
their tongue.

Rand met and became friendly with Joseph Brooks, who spoke Mi’kmaq fluently
and taught the minister more about the language.

Rand became intrigued with the legends and stories of the first nation
people, and collected nearly 100 of them together into Legends of the
Micmacs, published in 1894. However, being a Victorian and a minister, Rand
took some liberties with the translations, glossing and censoring some
aspects of the stories.

"Such good stories are both mortal and immortal," Sanger writes in the first
of two essays accompanying the stories and their various translations. "To
live steadily over a long span of time in one form of detail, stories need
not only good tellers but also good listeners. Stories, to survive, need
that act of will and belief which is faithful memory."

It is this belief in the need for faithful memory, in this case faithful
translation, that drove Sanger to collaborate with Mi’kmaq speaker and
teacher Elizabeth Paul and noted Mi’kmaq artist Alan Syliboy to accurately
bring the two stories back to life for today’s readers.

Paul and her mother laboured over photocopies of the original texts and came
up with translations that were accurate (and dramatically different from
Rand’s versions.)

Syliboy’s black and white illustrations are rich in detail and Mi’kmaq
culture, incorporating traditional designs and symbols, some from ancient
petrogylphs, into his work. As he told listeners during a slide
presentation showing both the line drawings and further studies in colour,
"I lost my language (through being forced to speak English at school) but
my language has turned into making pictures."

To have the two stories of The Stone Canoe come fully to life, they ought to
be read aloud in Mi’kmaq, and visitors to Gaspereau Press’s annual Wayzgoose
were treated to readings by Elizabeth Paul. She told her listeners that just
as we don’t speak English today exactly as we did in the time of Silas Rand
and Joseph Brooks, the Mi’kmaq don’t speak or write their language exactly
as Susan Barss or Old Man Stephens would have done.

Perhaps we can’t all understand the telling of the tales of The Stone Canoe
in their native tongue. But we can be enthralled by this "story of two
stories" and the place that the stories claim in indigenous literature in
Canada.

Jodi Delong is a freelance writer living in Scotts Bay.