There’s been a French presence in what’s in the present day the southern American Midwest close to the Mississippi River since 1673. Naming their colony ‘the Illinois Nation’ for the native Illiniwek tribes who inhabited it, these first French settlers traded with, preached Catholicism to, and intermarried with native Indigenous communities, leading to a definite French Creole heritage and dialect that also reverberates, albeit faintly, within the area in the present day. On this quick, the Missouri-born artist Brian Hawkins pairs gorgeous animation constructed from watercolours with audio of one of many final native audio system of Illinois Nation French recounting a whimsical native folktale that’s been almost misplaced to time. Unfolding like an attractive image guide sprung to life, Hawkins’s work is without delay a wondrous act of creativity and of cultural preservation.
