Rethinking Authenticity, Legitimacy, and Agency in the Context of the Six Seasons of the Asiniskaw Īthiniwak Project

This discussion, stemming from our keynote address at 2022 ACLAR Biennial Conference, brings together researchers and emerging scholars from the Six Seasons of the Asiniskaw Īthiniwak project, a community-driven research project that shares knowledge about Rocky Cree culture in northern Manitoba, Canada, through historical picture books, picture book apps, and teachers’ guides. Using this project as a case study, we reflect on the three themes of the 14th Biennial ACLAR Conference: legitimacy, authenticity, and agency. In particular, we trouble the concept of authenticity and question its usefulness for the kind of cross-cultural research that we are undertaking in the project. We document our processes for working with oral stories and translating these into written texts. We outline the community and scholarly research that grounds the textual, pictorial, and auditory representations of the picture books and apps we produce, and propose that the aspiration to historical, cultural, geographical, and linguistic accuracy at the centre of our project is a more enabling objective than a search for authenticity is. We also discuss how the curriculum materials we develop seek to connect young readers with Rocky Cree culture and use the concepts of agency and entanglement to think through these connections. The final part of this discussion considers a gathering on Rocky Cree culture that academic researchers and Rocky Cree community researchers and knowledge keepers organized collaboratively. Not only was our project initiated by Rocky Cree community members, but, as this gathering demonstrates, it also assumes an ongoing relationship with these communities.