The Dane-zaa people have lived in the Peace River area of northern<br>British Columbia for thousands of years. Elders documented the<br>people's history and worldview in oral narratives and passed on<br>their knowledge through storytelling. Language loss in the youngest<br>generation, however, threatens to break the bonds of knowledge<br>transmission.<br><br>At the request of the Doig River First Nations anthropologists Robin<br>and Jillian Ridington present a history of the Dane-zaa people based on<br>oral histories collected over a half century of fieldwork. Taking a<br>poetic form that does justice to the rhythm of Dane-zaa storytelling,<br>these powerful stories span the full length of history, from the story<br>of creation to the fur trade, from the arrival of missionaries to cases<br>heard in the Supreme Court of Canada. Elders document key events as<br>they explain the very nature of the universe and how people and animals<br>learned to live together on the land.<br><br>These oral histories, told by one of the last First Nations to<br>experience the effects of colonialism, not only preserve traditional<br>knowledge for future generations, they also tell the inspiring story of<br>how the Dane-zaa learned to succeed in the modern world.<br><br> <b>Robin Ridington</b> is a professor emeritus of<br>anthropology at the University of British Columbia and has worked with<br>the Dane-zaa First Nations since the 1960s. <b>Jillian<br>Ridington</b> is an ethnographer and researcher who has worked<br>with the Dane-zaa First Nations since 1978. Their books about the<br>Dane-zaa include Robin's <i>Trail To Heaven: Knowledge and<br>Narrative in a Northern Native Community</i>, and a co-authored book,<br><i>When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices<br>and Representations.</i>