Ancient Ways, New Visions Traditional Knowledge in the Mackenzie Delta Region, N.W.T. (verbatim trsanscript) A Mackenzie Valley Heritage Vignette Directed & Edited: Lori J. Schroeder Written and Produced: Jean-Luc Pilon A production of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Québec. February, 1995 (Jean-Luc Pilon, archaeologist): "Libraries are important places. We can find all sorts of information in them, from European Medieval castles to the first landing on the moon. Books are precious and we respect and care for them. This is how we learn; this is how we build on what earlier generations accomplished before us. But books and libraries are quite recent additions to the ways that people have used to cope with the need to pass on useful information. For thousands of years, events and instructions were transmitted verbally through the recounting of legends and stories. In fact, that still goes on today." (Noel Andre, Gwich'in elder): "Henjuu means just a line of trees beside the creek and deh'tla, Henjuu deh'tla that means if you look at some of those creeks, they look like rope and tshik that means at the mouth." (Jean-Luc Pilon, archaeologist): "In the early 1990's, a number of projects took place in the lower Mackenzie Valley and in the Beaufort Sea/Mackenzie Delta region which were concerned with traditional knowledge; especially its collection and preservation for future generations." (Gabe Andre, Gwich'in elder): "Teh'deh'tcha that's the one that got killed here, you know. He killed so many Eskimos. They were sleeping in the smoke house while that time they surrounded him. Must have been 10, 15 of them grab a hold of him while he's sleeping. His mother-in-law was there with that awl while Eskimos wrestling with him, holding him down, poke him in the back with that t'sa. He killed half of them. Themselves they made that story out of it. Teh'deh'tcha. Gee'na'mon'tong'tcho which means "Is that you?". They used to kill lots of our people. That was right here." (Murielle Nagy, anthropologist): "We got life stories really, life experience recalled by people. We got some stories that were told to them by their parents. But that was mostly how people lived at one place. So this is from their own recollection of being a youngster along the Yukon North Slope or at Herschel Island. What kind of subsistence they had around, going caribou hunting, seal hunting, whale hunting, the kind of houses they had, things like that. But there was a part of oral tradition, in the sense that there were also stories about people who were there before them, or stories like that." (Alestine Andre, anthropologist): "I'm just amazed at the knowledge that people have about the land; the names of the places, the resources that are there, the stories that are attached to some of these names. But if you go out with elders, certainly you could tell that they know how to live on the land, they know how to survive on the land. A sharp axe is important, a good knife is important, you know all these things, little things that tell you this is a good person to go out on the land with, beit a man or a woman. You know, so and the information they have collected over their lifetime, their experiences and recounted in their stories and demonstrated. I have so much admiration for them and I think experts is a good name for them." "The project that we did last summer was mainly geared toward a specific project. We had specific questions to ask the experts or the elders that we talked to and it was mainly focussed on trails and campsites as well as resources available in a given area as well as place names and any related stories that the place names may have had." (Ingrid Kritsch, anthropologist): "They get such a very very narrow view on Native People in the cities and I think when you come up here you get a just much more rounded idea of what life is like, what the culture is actually all about. To see people in their own environment and to understand that there is so much knowledge that they have, that's all related to the land because they've lived on, the older people at least, have lived on the land for, well, all their lives. " (Elisa Hart, anthropologist): "We hope to produce a book that lists all the heritage sites with the history on them and intersperse that with information on technology and archaeology so that its something that could be used in a school. Another benefit is that all the tapes go to the territorial archives, Northwest Territories Archives, and are preserved there for future generations. And that's actually very, it seems very important to the elders to think that their great-great-grand-children can go into the Archives and listen to their voice, listen to them tell stories about traditional life, is important to them. " (Naudia Lennie, researcher): "These tapes are important yes, and I'm very thankful for them. But I think what's more important is the elders that you have today. You know, go out there and talk to them, listen to what they have to say. And if you can't understand their language, learn it. You're young enough to learn it. Its as simple as that. I can almost hear the young people: "Oh ya, ya. How can you learn this?" If you just take time. Get out of the arcades. Get out of the little teenage in-things that you're doing and start spending time. That, that's your gift to life here; spending time with the elders. I can't put it any more simply than that." (Gabe Andre, Gwich'in elder): "If I knew this, what's going to happen today, in the future, I would have asked. A hundred years from now you'll never get nothing about it anymore. But now its dying off. Its going to be harder. But what I know, that's just by old people telling me stories a few times and I listened to it. But I never know that 40 years from now there's going to be somebody was going to ask me about it; thing like this. Its too bad nobody wrote a book, eh, like a hundred years ago."