New Indigenous baby board book explores the pleasure of sharing a meal
- Angela Hill | May 02, 2018
The Northern Heathy Communities Partnership launched an Indigenous language board book for children in March.
“It was a direct response from feedback from families about the kinds of books they would like to see,” said Amanda Frain, who coordinates the partnership.
The network of organizations offers a program called Babies, Books and Bonding that see children receive books from birth until they are four years old, through their immunization visits.
Parents were really interested in books available in Indigenous languages, and while there are many great options for older kids, there wasn’t a board book for 18-months-old, said Frain. So, the collective set about creating one.
The process has taken years.
Calyn Stange (Burnouf) is a dietician who has been involved with the Babies, Books and Bonding team for more than five years. She said she has always loved children’s books and was the creative mind behind the story, Are You Hungry?
“It is so special to be able to share the story of a northern family gathering and preparing foods to enjoy as a meal together,” she said.
“It has been a really exciting project and I feel so fortunate to see my story turned into a book.”
Crystal Seegerts, a young artist from Black Lake, submitted art and an application to become the illustrator.
Then the book was translated. Three versions exist and each is bilingual: Cree/English, Dene/English and Michif/English.
Then the partnership needed funding. The $20,000 – enough to ensure every 18-month-old in the north would receive one of the books for the next three years – came from James Irvine and Trudy Connor. The pair raised their family in the north and have seen the importance of language and culture first hand.
“When (there was) challenges with funding, we felt that it would be a real honour for us to help move this forward, so we offered our support for it financially,” said Irvine, who has sat as chair of the partnership and is a retired northern medical health officer.
“Trudy and I have always valued early childhood development and importance of early childhood development in the north for literacy and for bonding, connecting infants with their parents and grandparents.”
Irvine and Connor attended the launch at the La Ronge public library. They had three readers at the library’s children’s story hour. Tom Roberts read Cree, Allan Adam read Dene (and was a translator of the book), and Vicky Marinuk read Michif.
Connor said the event was very moving.
“(Roberts) started by talking about how he was forced to learn English at residential school and there he was at the public library and he was reading a story about life on the land in both Cree and English,” she said.
“He talked about just how touching it really was for him and really it was very touching for us all.”
So far all of the feedback has been positive, said Frain.
“It’s certainly been a goal for a while, so it’s wonderful to see it come to fruition.”