Presentation Type
Presentation
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Mizuki Miyashita
Faculty Mentor’s Department
Linguistics Program
Abstract / Artist's Statement
The purpose of this project is to create a digital story book which engages in the cultural preservation and language revitalization of the Northern Cheyenne, the tribe in Eastern Montana where I am an enrolled member. In this presentation, I will describe the steps I took for this project. First, I gathered material from personal experience and analyzed it working with community members, elders, and linguist mentors. For this project, I selected the Northern Cheyenne cultural teaching: “Put a stick above the crib to ward off bad spirits and keep away bad dreams.” I built a story in English, surrounding a little girl named Cedar who shows great determination to find the perfect stick for her baby sister's crib. Then the story was translated into Northern Cheyenne with an assistance from a native speaker consultant and linguist mentors. When the writing was complete, I began to research art styles. This led me to design the characters and the environment, referencing people and the Northern Cheyenne reservation. After drafting numerous storyboards, I set my final design. The finished illustrations were transferred to Adobe InDesign to add text. I made one E-book in English and one in Cheyenne. In the future, I hope to create animations from the illustrations I made. This project will contribute to the efforts in language revitalization in my community. Additionally, this project and my future work will address the issue of unbalanced ethnic representations since Native Americans are only portrayed in 1% of children’s books (School Library Journal 2019). I am committed to make materials that catalyze my Northern Cheyenne culture and language revitalization; it is also imperative that these materials help overall Native American representation.
Category
Social Sciences
A Stick for a Crib: A digital story inspired by the Northern Cheyenne culture
The purpose of this project is to create a digital story book which engages in the cultural preservation and language revitalization of the Northern Cheyenne, the tribe in Eastern Montana where I am an enrolled member. In this presentation, I will describe the steps I took for this project. First, I gathered material from personal experience and analyzed it working with community members, elders, and linguist mentors. For this project, I selected the Northern Cheyenne cultural teaching: “Put a stick above the crib to ward off bad spirits and keep away bad dreams.” I built a story in English, surrounding a little girl named Cedar who shows great determination to find the perfect stick for her baby sister's crib. Then the story was translated into Northern Cheyenne with an assistance from a native speaker consultant and linguist mentors. When the writing was complete, I began to research art styles. This led me to design the characters and the environment, referencing people and the Northern Cheyenne reservation. After drafting numerous storyboards, I set my final design. The finished illustrations were transferred to Adobe InDesign to add text. I made one E-book in English and one in Cheyenne. In the future, I hope to create animations from the illustrations I made. This project will contribute to the efforts in language revitalization in my community. Additionally, this project and my future work will address the issue of unbalanced ethnic representations since Native Americans are only portrayed in 1% of children’s books (School Library Journal 2019). I am committed to make materials that catalyze my Northern Cheyenne culture and language revitalization; it is also imperative that these materials help overall Native American representation.