Tracing Memories: collaborative research in the Tłı̨chǫ region

• Author / Creator

  Adolfo Ruiz

• Background to this dissertation:
  In 2012 I began a creative collaboration in the Tłı̨chǫ region of the Northwest Territories. Over a period of 18 months I worked with community elders and youth in the creation of an animated film (based on a historic oral story). This PhD is a continuation of that work. The next phase in this collaboration has involved a more complex process of travel and media production along with higher level involvement from participants and myself. Through this research I have worked with community members to explore how a creative practice may bridge knowledge from the past with current and future generations. The following section will elaborate on this inquiry.

  Bridging knowledge:
  In this document I will describe how knowledge was bridged through the co-creation of an animated film. Research and production behind this film involved extensive travel, a historical reenactment, and collective image-making. As I will discuss throughout part 1 of this dissertation, the process of making this film recontextualized knowledge from the past. A creative project helped mediate between ancestral memory, and twenty-first century Dene society. The following chapters will elaborate on the journey behind this project, illustrating how the past was brought into the present, while also describing multiple excursions on the land. The introduction to this dissertation provides a description of the land that I have been honoured to visit many times—it is the land that brought this research to life.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • animation
  • art
  • Dene
  • design
  • human ecology
  • indigenous
  • material culture
  • oral history
  • storytelling
  • Tłı̨chǫ

• Graduation date

  Fall 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3FB4X28S

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.