A very small staff and community puppeteers produce five video shows a year of the animated puppet show Tota tanon Ohkwa:ri, which are told in the Mohawk language, stories of a grandmother and grandchild. The content and scripts are created with elders and cover a range of topics -traditional stories and teachings, health messages and everyday topics.
In addition to the 60 episodes on file, and the current show being developed the team have been doing live shows this year with different schools, on the topics of diabetes and next show is about resisting peer pressure.
In the past most scripts have been written in English, so to overcome translation problems, Marion is working on the idea of audio recording elders creating the script in language. Then the puppeteers will learn the script from the audio and in this way Mohawk world view, ways of thinking and talking will be preserved. Marion said "the arts makes learning language fun, its a great way to engage youth and to get elders and youth working together ". She loves producing the show and said she has learnt so much working with elders over the years. The messages from elders continually reinforce the teachings "that we should not put ourselves above the life sustainers (the plants and animals), by giving thanks we restore the balance, something has died so our life can be sustained."
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