This beautiful publication celebrates Axenet’i Tth’ al (pronounced Aah-hen-neh ti thul)—or Fringe— a breath-taking, community-built fringe landscape celebrating the ingenuity of Northern Dene trappers and artisans that was created by Denesuline Elders and youth of Patuanak with the support of resident and visiting artists.

The story of the Axenet’i Tth’al exhibition is steeped in the rich history of collaboration between the English River First Nation (ERFN), resident artist Michèle Mackasey, guest artist Manuel Chantre, and numerous partners. As such, we felt a need to document the journey in a comprehensive way, sharing the process and learnings with a broad community and celebrating the stories of ERFN participants.

In 2019, Common Weal staff set out planning an Axenet’i Tth’al publication, along with Michèle Mackasey and Wanuskewin Galleries Curator Felicia Gay. Felicia’s expertise brought a clarity of intent to the publication, which has served and guided the process throughout. We knew that we wanted the ERFN community voices and faces to be forefront in the book—to put Indigenous perspectives first. With this simple edict, the entire narrative and expected format of the publication was turned on its head, in comparison to conventions we had not even realized that we held. This meant that the Denesuline translations of the text came first, before the English version in the book’s layout. It meant that there were more Indigneous voices featured than colonial and that the colloquialisms and cadence of these voices was not altered to suit an institutional ear. It also meant that we worked at a different pace than a publication would generally take, as designs and translations were passed by ERFN advisers and elders at each stage.