Documenting Tlingit Raven Stories [ISO 639 tli]

Tlingit Readers, Inc., Juneau AK

Investigators

Abstract

There are now an estimated 300 speakers of Tlingit, down from the estimated 2,000 speakers in the 1974. Such a rapid decline has made more urgent completion of work on a major volume of Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature. With NSF support, Richard and Nora Marks Dauenhauer will complete the camera-ready copy of volume 5 in the series, Tlingit Raven Stories. It includes approximately fifty stories by twelve storytellers; some new stories may be added. Audio files will also be published, minimally a CD to accompany the book, and ideally a web-based format. The audio component of the publication is new for several reasons. New technology makes distribution feasible and affordable, but of greater importance, two major Tlingit cultural prohibitions against publishing the sound files have diminished in the last 35 years. When the Dauenhauers first started, Tlingit elders were very uncomfortable about hearing the voices of the departed. Also, there was a strong tradition of clan ownership of stories, a kind of oral copyright, so that while the content was not secret or esoteric, rights to tell a story were restricted. Since then, an entire generation of speakers has died. The tribal audience is now comprised of the younger generation, who are themselves learners, not speakers, of the language. When weighed against the survival and documentation of the language itself, the traditional constraints on performance now seem less important, and the voice of the departed elders is becoming a source of comfort and inspiration rather than discomfort and distress. Raven stories are the comic genre in Tlingit oral literature, and Tlingit Raven Stories will be the first such collection published in the Tlingit language in the entire 200-year history of books about Tlingit. The first and still only Raven story in Tlingit was published by the Dauenhauers as a booklet in 1973. Otherwise, all Raven stories have been published in Russian, German, or English retellings, but never in Tlingit. The book features Tlingit texts transcribed from tape recordings of oral performance, facing English translation, annotation, and the spoken version itself. It includes approximately 50 stories by the last generation of master storytellers raised in the Tlingit language and culture, with the full range of linguistic and stylistic skills. The last of these tradition bearers passed away in 2006 at the age of 93. The permanent record created in this project will ensure its usefulness for researchers and language learners well into the future.