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ACLS Celebrates Open Access Book Prize Awardee
Authors of As I Remember It: Teachings (ʔəms tɑʔɑw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder Celebrated in Special Ceremony
Tuesday, October 22, 2024, ACLS co-hosted a ceremony to honor the authors of As I Remember It: Teachings (ʔəms tɑʔɑw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder, winner of the 2024 ACLS Open Access Book Prize and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award.
Co-authors Elsie Paul; her grandchildren Davis McKenzie and Harmony Johnson; and Paige Raibmon, professor of history at the University of British Columbia (UBC), joined ACLS, University of British Columbia Press, RavenSpace publishing, and dozens of community members and supporters for a celebration honoring the authors at the Haida House at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in Vancouver.
As I Remember It is a peer-reviewed digital publication by RavenSpace Publishing at the University of British Columbia Press. Sharing traditional knowledge with a new generation, a mother-tongue speaker of the Sliammon language, 93-year-old Tla’amin Elder Elsie Paul, weaves personal memoir with multimodal teachings that address colonialism, territory and geography, community, and wellness.
The event commenced with a Musqueam Territorial Welcome by Jordan Wilson, a PhD candidate in anthropology, who praised the book’s celebration of ancestral knowledge. “Remember your teachers and elders and know where you come from,” he shared. “Elsie is the embodiment of that.”
The celebration continued with remarks by ACLS Project Manager for Amplifying Humanistic Scholarship Sarah McKee, who noted the significance of hosting the celebration during 2024 Open Access Week. “Today we celebrate community over commercialization.”
In her remarks, Darcy Cullen, founder of RavenSpace publishing, shared about the importance of having high-caliber resources about Indigenous life, people, and events that are peer-reviewed and accessible. She said the open access version of As I Remember It offers a strong example of how such titles can extend the life of traditional bound book versions. “We’ve seen a 50-70% increase of use with 14,000 unique visitors last year from around the world.”
In accepting the prize, Elsie Paul thanked her grandparents for sharing the Tla’amin teachings with her, enabling her to pass them on within and now beyond her community. She also spoke of the book’s impact. “When my children were going to our local school, they were never taught about our culture or who we are as a people,” she explained. “With the book, I hear from people I don’t even know thanking me for sharing these teachings. I’m just really grateful for that and how much it has helped so many people.”
