Anishinabe tales entice reader, preserves culture

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REVIEW

The Star-Man and Other Tales

By Basil H. Johnston and Jonas George (Wah-sa-ghe-zik),

Illustrated by Ken Syrette (Nohdin)

64 pages, University of Toronto

$19.95 (h.c.)

Books like The Star-Man are small pieces of the giant mosaic that is Aboriginal culture. We may not understand the stories because they clash with the Western esthetics of plot, theme and character, but they give us a tantalizing glimpse into the Anishinabe world.

The nine stories in The Star-Man are enticing you to learn more about Anishinabe culture. The book is illustrated with the vibrant paintings of Ken Syrette who is from the Batchewana First Nation in Ontario. His Anishinabe name is Nohdin, which means Wind in English.

These are stories that have been handed down through the generations. Basil Johnston, an Anishinabe from the Cape Croker First Nation in Ontario, and Jonas George, an Anishinabe who was born in 1850 on the Rama First Nation in Ontario, are listed as co-authors on the book, but this isn't accurate. These stories have been collected by Johnston, who translated them into English. Two other storytellers, Sam Ozawamik and Frank Shawbedees, are also featured.

This book is a good introduction for those who are unfamiliar with how Aboriginal tales work. The reader might be distracted by the fact that the characters are inconsistent, or that some of the stories end abruptly and don't seem to have much of a point. This is more due to the English translation which doesn't have the nuances of the Anishinabe language to fill out the hidden meanings in the story. But these stories still move the reader.

Even though it looks like a children's book, adults will find themselves more challenged by it than children. Children will find the logic and meaning in these stories faster than adults, because they haven't been programmed to appreciate Western literature. There's nothing wrong with Western literature, except that it has a set of rules that are hard to shake whenever you try to appreciate something else.

Have you ever watched a movie that's been dubbed into English? I'm a subtitle person myself because the original actor's emotion and skill mean more to me than hearing a foreign film in English. The actors they hire for dubbing are doing the best they can, but they have to react to what the actors on-screen are doing. For anyone who's ever acted, this is an incredible hurdle to overcome.

This book is like a really good foreign film that's been dubbed into English, but something's been lost in the translation. I'm only saying foreign film for the sake of making a metaphor; I know English is really a foreign language to the Aboriginal people of Canada.

Johnston, an author and educator who's been preserving the Ojibway culture for most of his life, has presented several tales from the Anishinabe culture. He's fluent in the Anishinabe language as well as English.

There has been loud and often bitter debate about writing down Aboriginal stories in English. The original context is different, and the drama and cadence of the speaker is lost. But what is that compared to losing these stories forever? Whatever people's opposition to writing is, there is no better way to preserve a culture than to have some sort of permanent record of it.

If we can't have the stories in the original Anishinabe language, at least we have something. So maybe a little gets lost in the translation, there is enough there for the culture to shine through and express itself.

Hey, a culture is "better read than dead."