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Weather Centre 7°C Light rain showers Search for > Digital Products Inside The StarPhoenix Weekly Sections Features Sports Classifieds Marketplace Announcements General Classifieds Enter our contests Your StarPhoenix Letters Today's Star Phoenix LLOYDMINSTER -- Gerry Ritz, Saskatchewan's Conservative cabinet minister, seemed... Latest News Get the daily headlines emailed to you every morning with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix newsletter. Email Address: Metis stories captured in graphic novel anthology Luke Simcoe, The StarPhoenix Published: Monday, October 06, 2008 When Jeanne Pelletier's children were still young, the single mother of eight would entertain her kids with stories and traditional Metis dances. "We didn't have enough money for them to do all the things that kids do," she said. "That's what we did for our home entertainment." Now in her late 60s, Pelletier is the author of several children's books and a prominent Metis storyteller. Font: One of her stories, a tale of three Metis tricksters, is included in the forthcoming book Stories of Our People: A Metis Graphic Novel Anthology. Originally envisioned as a Metis folklore project out of the Gabriel Dumont Institute (GDI) of Native Studies and Applied Research, the book began as a series of interviews with Metis storytellers such as Pelletier, Joe Welsh and Norman Fleury. However, when GDI realized it didn't have enough resources to complete the project, it took transcripts of the interviews and set about turning them into a graphic novel. "We thought it would be a good way to promote the inter-generational transmission of Metis stories," said Darren Prefontaine, a researcher at GDI and one of the people behind the book. Prefontaine, who hopes the anthology will become a resource for Metis and Canadian youth, said the graphic novel format was chosen for two reasons. "It's the main medium to reach teens," he said. "And there's a definite link between the oral tradition and visual media." David Morin, a curriculum developer at GDI, agreed. "Because the stories are so vivid, they lend themselves to the graphic format really well," Morin said. "It really brought the stories to life." The anthology, which Prefontaine said is both the first graphic novel produced in Saskatchewan and the first uniquely Metis graphic novel made in Canada, contains five versions of traditional Metis folktales. The stories run the gamut from light-hearted trickster tales to encounters with Metis werewolves (Roogaroos) and even the devil (li Jiyaab). All of the illustrations in the book were done by Metis artist Carrie Saganace, who said the project was her first time working on a graphic novel. "I had never done anything like it before," she said. Saganace, who said she is able to "do everything from a woodlands style to Disney," took a different artistic approach to each story in the collection. One story is done entirely in watercolour; another is illustrated on the computer; and the trickster story which opens the anthology was drawn in a style reminiscent of Little Orphan Annie. "Each story just had its own feel to it," Saganace said. Much like the way the written word unites with visual images to produce a graphic novel, Prefontaine said Metis stories are enriched by the way they combine French Canadian and First Nations folklore. "The best storytelling traditions in Canada are French Canadian and First Nations," he said. "The Metis stories blend these two great traditions but they make them their own." Much of the Metis tradition's unique character can be attributed to the Michif language, said Prefontaine. Michif, a blend of the Cree and Ojibway tongues with French, is the official Metis language.