Nakoda Audio
Visual Club
Ask for your kit at your local Stoney Health Services Building, or email us and we'll arrange to send one to you.
Ti Mani Daguskan
(welcome babies)
What's in the kit:
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a baby onesie
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an animal soother
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a kit with supplies and instructions to make your own tiny moccasins
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3 îethka books
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a link to Îethka songs you can sing to your baby
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a bag to hold everything
This project generously funded by:
In 2021 we collaborated from artists from Mînîthnî and Oneida on the Thames to make a board book of Îethka colors for babies. We called it Marazu Hmûga Owabi Chach. We printed 150 copies and gave them to the artists who contributed. We had such fun making the books that we decided to make more things for babies... that's when we started the timani daguskan project.
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Our goal is to welcome new Îethka babies to the community, and to provide support for young parents to teach their children Îethka Îabi (language) and culture. We made 100 welcome packages for new babies and young parents that include basic supplies to welcome babies into Îethka culture.
As a storytelling society, the Nakoda AV Club maintains an artistic practice in Îethka culture. In this project our artistic output is the crafting of a new generation of children who speak our traditional language.
In our community generations are short; the average age of parents (in our experience and local knowledge) is late teens and early twenties. Babies are celebrated and everyone is happy when new children come to the family, but younger generations don’t know the language, and so they can’t teach their children. We know that our language is important to Îethka culture.
We want to provide some fun and engaging tools that inspire young parents in our community to ground their children in Îethka culture and language. Making these packages utilizes our artistic skills as storytellers, graphic designers, animators, and makers.
This is why we feel it would be really impactful to teach each other, and encourage each other, as a group of young adults with our own children. We will be encouraging other young parents and learning the language ourselves. We will be creating a community that is supportive of learning and teaching culture and language. We’ll all be motivated because it’s for the children, not just for ourselves.
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Click the images on this page for links to the videos & moccasin making instructions.
