An astonishing story cycle from one of the unsung heroes of Native Canadian literature

Dictated first in 1928 at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, in the Chipewyan language, by François Mandeville, these stories were then transcribed by the Chinese linguist Li Fang-Kuei. They lay dormant in his notebooks for nearly half a century until they resurfaced in Taipei in 1976. Now, at last, Ron Scollon, pre-eminent linguist and one of the original translators, has returned to the texts to make this new, colloquial English version.

Chipewyan is one of the many Northern Athapaskan languages, spoken in Alaska and western Canada. No other work of Northern Athapaskan literature has the power and range of Mandeville’s cycle of stories, and no other work in any language gives such a rich picture of traditional life and thought in the Northern Athapaskan world.

“An invaluable book on how to be and not to be, on work and dedication, on the inner life of scholarship, and on life and death in the old ways.” —Gary Snyder

François Mandeville was born at Fort Resolution in the Northwest Territories in 1878. He was the son of a Metis interpreter and worked as a Hudson’s Bay Company trader, learning all the native languages of the Mackenzie River region. Around 1921, he retired to Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta, where he became known as an expert storyteller.