Join renowned author Eldon Yellowhorn as he explains the world around us in Indigenous terms. Yellowhorn brings a new way of viewing for those who have not yet been privy to Indigenous knowledge and a renewed excitement for those who are already familiar.

Location: Surrey Public Library

Type: Non-fiction, Young Adult, Ages 11-15, Grades 6-10

Sponsored by Y.P. Heung Foundation, Chris Spencer Foundation

Host: Jónína Kirton 

Reader: Eldon Yellowhorn, Sky Wolf’s Call: The Gift of Indigenous Knowledge (Annick Press)

About The Host

Jónína Kirton, a Métis Icelandic poet graduated from the Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio in 2007 and is currently an Adjunct Professor with the UBC Creative Writing Program. She was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her third book, Standing in a River of Time, released in 2022, merges poetry and lyrical memoir to take us on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on a Métis family.

About The Reader

Dr. Yellowhorn is member of the Piikani Nation and has family and cultural ties to the Peigan Indian Reserve. His Piikani name, Otahkotskina, which translates as Yellow Horn, has been in the family for generations. His early career in archaeology began in southern Alberta, where he studied the ancient cultures of the plains. He is especially interested in using the mythology and folklore of his Piikani ancestors to interpret the archaeological record of the northern plains. As a native speaker of the Blackfoot language, Dr. Yellowhorn is working to preserve it and ensure its future. He is exploring the potential of artificial intelligence, such as chatbots and text-to-speech modalities, for creating language-learning applications that introduce Blackfoot to the next generation of speakers.