Talking to the Story Keepers: Tales from the Chilcotin Plateau [Paperback]

InTalking to the Story Keepers, writer and journalist Sage Birchwater gathers dozens of stories spanning decades in the Cariboo Chilcotin. These stories reflect on the story keepers themselves as well as our collective humanity, tying everything from the small moments, heroic deeds, and colourful characters, to the greater significance of our histories. Each story contains insight, wisdom, knowledge, or entertainment, connecting the past to the present and shaping the future in each telling; each story provides a sense of perspective of where we come from, and prepares us for how we might proceed forward.Talking to the Story Keepersalso offers an image of a changing landscape, identifying the quiet or forgotten stories swept aside by colonization. From the tale of the Old Emmanuel United Church congregation singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” from the pews as the 65-year-old church was dragged across the river to a new location, to the Ulkatcho community search for missing local Tory Jack, which was successfully led to its conclusion by a clever horse, each story builds a portrait of time, place, and of the story keepers that protect these histories for the next generation.Sage Birchwateris the author ofChiwid and Williams Lake: Gateway to the Cariboo Chilcotin. He was a staff writer for theWilliams Lake Tribuneuntil 2009, and is the editor ofGumption & Grit: Extraordinary Women of the Cariboo Chilcotin(Caitlin Press, 2009). Sage still lives in Williams Lake, BC, and continues to write about the Chilcotin.Contains fascinating stories of Indigenous and settler inhabitants of the Chilcotin Plateau, a remote area in the middle of British Columbia, Canada