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La Ronge authors win provincial book award

Apr 30, 2018 | 5:00 PM

La Ronge’s Miriam Körner and Bernice Johnson-Laxdal are the latest Saskatchewan Book Award winners.

On Saturday, the two writers were announced as the jury’s pick in the Children’s Literature category during a special ceremony in Regina. Their book When the Trees Crackle With Cold is written in English and Cree, and Körner said it wasn’t until she was on stage when reality set in.

“It just felt incredibly good to be acknowledged for all the hard work we’ve been doing,” she said. “The work was all of a sudden worthwhile and to be acknowledged for what we’d done was a really powerful moment.”

A children’s picture book, Körner noted the story is about the Cree moon calendar and the traditional activities Johnson-Laxdal – who is originally from Île-à-la-Crosse – would do with her family as a child each month. She said work on the book lasted a few years and it also involved the assistance of many people from the tri-communities. Help was accepted during the book’s production, translating into Cree, acquiring traditional knowledge, and checking the content and proof reading.

The book was recently translated in the ‘th’ Cree dialect, Körner said, as it was initially written in the ‘y’ dialect for speakers on the west side of the province. She added with the new translation, members of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band will be able to read it as that’s the dialect locally used. According to comments from the jury, Körner said they won because of their efforts to revitalize language.

“What they said was this book was a source pride for Saskatchewan and it was really timely, because it’s keeping Indigenous cultures and languages alive,” she said. “I’m really, really proud to be recognized for that, especially as a non-Indigenous person to have contributed to that.”

The work is also available as an e-book, which Körner hopes teachers use during for their lesson plans. She added an activity book has been produced to help with those efforts.

In 2017, the book won an International Moonbeam Children’s Book Award in the Multi-Cultural and Non-Fiction category.

 

derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno