My Grandparents-Memory Keepers

Edōsdi Judith C. Thompson

Edōsdi means ‘someone who raises up children and pets’. Edōsdi’s English name is Judy Thompson and she is a member of the Tahltan Nation. She is the Director of the Language Reclamation Department for her nation and is an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Education at the University of Victoria. Her passion is Indigenous language revitalization. Over the last three decades, she has been learning their language from her grandparents and other Tahltan Elders. She’s made it a life goal to experience her people’s ways of knowing, the worldview of our Ancestors, through their language. In the writing contest component of this anthology, Edōsdi won first prize poetry for “My Grandfather’s Cherished Mittens.”