Description
The life stories appearing in this volume come from communities where storytelling provides a customary framework for discussing the past. Angela Sidney, Kitty Smith and Annie Ned are three remarkable and gifted women of Athapaskan and Tlingit ancestry who were born in the southern Yukon Territory around the turn of the century. Their life stories tell us as much about the present as about the past, as much about ideas of community as about individual experience; they call our attention to the diverse ways humans formulate such linkages.
Reviews
Life Lived Like a Story is not a standard biography or autobiography. Instead, it remains true to the native way of recounting the past by giving appropriate weight to stories and songs as well as reminiscences … The charm, the wisdom (and often cheekiness) of these three women rings clear.
- Hugh Wilson
There is pure gold here for those who want to understand the rules of the old ways … [The book] has a convincing sureness, an intensity which cannot be denied, a strong sense of family … Candidly, and often with sly humour, the three women discuss early white-Indian relations, the Klondike gold rush, the epidemics, the starvation, the healthy and wealthy times, and building of the Alaska Highway … Integrity is here, and wisdom. There is no doubting the authenticity of the voices. As women, they had power and they used it wisely, and through their words and Cruikshank’s skills, you will change your mind if you think the anthropological approach to oral history can only be dull.
- Barry Broadfoot