Cultural Astronomy—in Three Languages

I’ve been lucky to work on some very interesting projects in my informal science education career. When I was an exhibit developer at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), we teamed up with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde to produce animated videos that featured astronomy stories from their cultural traditions. This project came up in conversation today as I chatted with a a job recruiter, who was blown away that we had developed content in Chinuk Wawa.

An opening scene from The Four Ages animated video on cultural astronomy.

Chinuk Wawa is an indigenous trade language that was in very active use from Alaska down through northern California in the mid-1800s. The recruiter I was talking with used to live in Alaska, and reports that you still hear it used in grocery stories there. I was happy to share with him that the tribes are working hard to keep the language alive in Oregon, as well.

The cultural astronomy videos that we produced at OMSI had two versions. The first is meant primarily for our audience of museum visitors. The spoken narration is in English, accompanied by Spanish subtitles.

The second version of the video has narration in Chinuk Wawa, with English subtitles. This version is tailored to the Tribes’ educational programs, supporting language learning as well as preserving the larger cultural legacy of this star story.

The narration—both in English and Chinuk Wawa—was done by Jordan Mercier of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. The original illustrations for these videos, which are closely based on traditional Chinookan art styles, were created by the talented Greg Archuleta of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Jotham Porzio pulled together the final animations—we also worked with him on other cultural astronomy projects for the Lenses on the Sky project.