Restoring Relations Through Stories: From Dinetah to Denendeh

Restoring Relations Through Stories explores land-based DinÉ and Dene imaginaries through stories, highlighting the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the DinÉ and Dene across time and space.

Format: Hardback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 31 May 2024
Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Land-based DinÉ and Dene imaginaries are explored in this insightful volume through stories, both oral and written. The book takes readers on a journey through various landscapes, places, and sites, much like the dynamic and kinetic nature of hÓzhǪ́. Renae Watchman provides an overview of stories that bring TsÉ BitʼaʼÍ, or Shiprock Peak, a significant landmark in present-day New Mexico, to life. The book then delves into the dynamic field of Indigenous film, examining two distinct feature-length films directed by DinÉ filmmakers. Finally, it concludes by introducing Dene literatures. While the DinÉ and Dene are not politically and economically unified today, they share ancestral and linguistic ties. In this book, Watchman employs literary and visual texts to examine how relations are restored through stories, highlighting how literary connections rooted in land-based narratives reinforce DinÉ and Dene kinship. She explores the transformative power of storytelling in forging ancestral and kinship bonds between the DinÉ and Dene across time and space through the re-storying of relationships. HÓzhǪ́, a complex DinÉ worldview and philosophy, is difficult to define in a single word in the English language. It encompasses the pursuit of harmony, beauty, balance, peace, and happiness, with the DinÉ having a deep-rooted right to it.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780816550357