The series, Stories of the North, is releasing season two on National Indigenous Peoples Day, June 21.
Stories of the North is a television show produced by City T.V. with actors from Saskatchewan. The series is about Moshum, who is helping his granddaughters navigate their young lives. He guides them by storytelling and using songs to help the girls learn the Cree language. The show is a combination of animation and live action, and each episode is seven minutes long. The Moshum in the show is played by Morris Cook.
“It’s a fun little show. We incorporate a lot of language into it, and there are also animation pieces to illustrate a little more clearly what we are trying to convey. Especially some of the spelling and some of the sounding of the Cree words in the Cree language,” said Cook.
Cook says that this series is made for everyone; it’s for children, adults, Cree speakers, Cree learners, Indigenous, and non-Indigenous.
“It’s sharing our language; it’s sharing our history through the language, and some of the culture really comes out as well with the themes that we touch on in the show. But it’s also in the songs that I sing in the show with the drum, and there are some pieces where, last season, we had a couple of scenes where there was smudging because it was thundering outside. It was a thunderbird series, so I sang a song about the thunderbird and smudged. So, there are lots of things to take in from the show,” explained Cook.
Stories of the North is made up of English and Cree and is made with non-Cree speakers in mind. The granddaughters in the series are not Cree speakers but are learning to pick up the language from the lessons they get when sitting with Moshum.
Stories of the North’s first episode of season two will air on June 21 on City TV. It can also be found online at citytv.com.
(Photo retrieved from Stories of the North Facebook)