Indigenous Storybooks

About us

Indigenous Storybooks is a Canadian website for children, families, community members, and educators. Inspired by the open-licensed stories from Little Cree Books, this project aims to make the text, images, and audio of stories available in Indigenous languages as well as English, French, and the most widely spoken immigrant and refugee languages of Canada. A story that is read in English or French at school can be read in ancestral languages by parents and children at home. In this way, Indigenous Storybooks provides access to stories in ancestral languages as well as English and French. Similarly, the audio versions of the stories can help beginning readers and language learners make the important connection between speech and text. A video introducing the Indigenous Storybooks project can be viewed here.

Source of stories

All of the stories on the Indigenous Storybooks website currently come from the Little Cree Books project in Alberta, Canada – a groundbreaking digital initiative promoting literacy in the Cree language. The stories are openly licensed, which allows the Indigenous Storybooks team to repurpose and translate them into other languages together with a modern, responsive web design for reading the stories. We are very grateful to Little Cree Books for making these stories freely available under an open license.

Other sources of Indigenous stories

There are several other websites that offer Indigenous stories. A collection of resources, including other sources of Indigenous stories, can be found on our Resources page.

Our team

Sara Florence Davidson

Sara Florence Davidson is a Haida/Settler educator and Assistant Professor in Indigenous education in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. She is also the project lead for Indigenous Storybooks. Sara’s research interests include Indigenous pedagogies (including storytelling) and research methodologies; adolescent literacies; narrative writing and research; and Indigenous education. She is the co-author of Potlatch as pedagogy: Learning through ceremony, which she wrote with her father. Website: saraflorence.ca

Bonny Norton

Bonny Norton, FRSC, is a Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, UBC. She is the research advisor for Indigenous Storybooks. Her research focuses on identity and language learning, critical literacy, and international development. Website: faculty.educ.ubc.ca/norton

Liam Doherty

Liam Doherty is a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Asian Studies and a Research Associate in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at UBC. He is the technical advisor for Indigenous Storybooks and a strong advocate for open educational resources. His research has examined digital learning, multilingualism, agency, and language socialization in learners.

Media

See our Media page for examples of press and other news where the Indigenous Storybooks project has been featured.

A video introducing the Indigenous Storybooks project can be viewed here.

Acknowledgements

We thank Jo-ann Archibald and Jan Hare for helpful conversations, and warmly invite other Indigenous scholars for comment and collaboration.

We warmly thank Education without Borders for their collaboration and support.

Funding is gratefully acknowledged from the Mitacs organization as well as the following UBC sources:

We would like to acknowledge the Yuneŝit'in Government for their financial support for the Tŝilhqot'in language translations.

Icons provided by FontAwesome (via Fontello) and Elegant Circles.

Logo

Our logo was created and generously donated by Haida artist Ben Davidson. Ben drew his inspiration from reading books to his own children. The child’s open embrace is also an open book, and the heart reflects his children’s love of stories.

Though Ben is a Haida artist, Indigenous Storybooks is a resource that includes the stories of many different nations. Therefore, he created a design that speaks to our universal engagement with and appreciation of stories.

Graphic design for the logo was donated by Haida artist Tyson Brown.