A Children's Book I Helped Illustrate - Final - Adam

I went to this program back in 2016 called the Shoshone-Goshute Youth Language Apprenticeship Program (SYLAP), which was based at University of Utah, and they recruit high school students that have ties to local tribal communities to participate in language revitalization while learning the language (culture was not intertwined with language for this program).

Through the program, we had an elder come in each week from South Fork, Ely/Goshute, Elko, Fort Hall, and Owyhee, and they shared their stories and took turns teaching the class. Our cohort was the last ones to participate in the program, which is why we transitioned to SCLI at Great Basin College.

We had two hours of instruction and did about four hours of apprenticeship work each day, and the work entailed making teacher materials and children’s print and audio books. Me and my partner Tristen from Battle Mountain worked on this book called Isapaippe Tukkanai Peyen Noyonee U Noopiteppeh; Newenee Tan Paitippeh, which roughly translates to “Coyote brought over the duck eggs from down there, and the Indians scattered.” The story talks about how the Plains and Great Basin tribes were created from the willow basket.

The books help teach learners of any age from the tribal communities the Shoshone language through a series of stories that get released each year. The idea stemmed from a project done on the Goshute Reservation with a children’s book they did back in the 90’s. I feel like these books are contributing greatly for our people because not a lot of people have someone to speak to at home, so they host these language classes like how we do and we take turns reading pages from the book there.

When we were illustrating the book, I wanted it to emulate what real Indians looked like back then. The previous books had the more modern Indian attire that you would have seen in the early 1800’s with buckskin, but since this was a creation story, we would have to go even further than that and gave the lady a sagebrush bark dress and it had some shells on it as well. Since the version of the story came from the Ibapah area, the women around there, Ely, and Duckwater tended to wear basket hats, so we gave her a basket hat. They also didn’t wear braids back then, and they left their hair down and free, usually cutting it by their shoulders. Since she was a duck woman, we gave her duck feet too. It was lit.

On one of the pages, I felt real NDN and painted a page with paint that I made out of berries I got from the side of the dorms we were staying. Overall, the project was really fun to work with. Last year, I also helped illustrate a book and I did a lot better in that book. It should be out by the end of this year or next year, depending. If you guys want resources for language revitalization, hmu.