Anaku Iwacha (The Way It Was): A New Edition of Yakama Legends and Stories

FAIN: RQ-260920-18

University of Oregon (Eugene, OR 97403-5219)
Michelle Jacob (Project Director: December 2017 to September 2021)
Joana Worth Jansen (Co Project Director: January 2018 to September 2021)

Preparation for print and ebook publication of a scholarly translation and edition of 46  historical narratives and legends of the Yakama Tribal communities. (12 months)

Our project contributes to Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and environmental humanities. The original text of Anakú Iwachá is a collection of stories Yakama Tribal Elders recorded in their Indigenous Ichishkíin language, translated into English and published in 1974, as an educational resource for students on the Yakama Reservation and surrounding areas in the Pacific Northwest. The text is out of print and inaccessible; our project addresses this problem and enriches the text with essays, annotations, and additional content. We will also add a map, Indigenous language education resources, and photos of key sites described in the stories. The project is of great value to scholars, Tribal communities, and a broad audience interested in philosophies of human/non-human relationships described in the stories. Yakama stories are thousands of years old and provide a model of place-based knowledge to inform the field of environmental humanities.