Inuvialuit artist Karis Gruben featured in graphic novel on international river deltas | CBC News

Gruben, 31, is a multidisciplinary artist based in Yellowknife. She grew up in Inuvik and spent years living in Ottawa. 

She gets her inspiration from her father, the late William Gruben, a notable carver from Tuktoyaktuk. This is her first time working on a graphic novel.

Gruben has two stories in the graphic novel. One celebrates the value of community connection through the Aklavik-to-Inuvik ice road, and the other tells a legend about the importance of the muskrat.

While she is working with fictional names, the stories are based on interviews Franz Krause did with real people living the Mackenzie-Beaufort Delta in 2017 and 2018.  

Krause is the project director and an anthropologist based out of the University of Cologne, in Germany, who lived and  conducted his fieldwork in Aklavik.  His research was published in two books, and most recently in the Journal of the American Ethnological Society.

The graphic novel, he said, is a creative and accessible way to bring that research back to the people and region who were the focus of his research. 

Novel includes stories from Myanmar, Brazil and Senegal

Because his research is part of a larger international project, the final graphic novel will contain similar collaborations between researchers and local artists in three other delta regions in Myanmar, Brazil and Senegal. 

“In the process of making this comic, we’re in conversation with people from those regions, and who have their own art styles, but also have their own histories,” Krause said.

Gruben said she is glad the German researchers are giving the artists the space for their own creativity and the freedom to make changes or additions so their stories are as realistic and representative as possible.

“It means a lot to me to be able to bring a piece of my world into this comic,” said Gruben.

Gruben flew to Cologne at the end of January to meet with other artists involved with the project, and to plan out storyboarding. She said they connected with German comic artists for mentorship. 

“Meeting other creative people, seeing their ideas on what this comic should be opened my mind a lot more,” Gruben said. “I think it was super beneficial to have this done in person.”

Krause and Gruben said the collaboration reveals common values around fishing, harvesting and spirituality. 

They said the stories show a common resilience and adaptability  among people in living in delta regions, which are bearing the brunt of climate change.

“I think we have a lot to learn from people who live in river deltas around the world, about what it means to inhabit…shifting spaces,” he said. “We think they’re sort of catastrophic, dystopias, but really [there is ] … quite likely, something that we’ll have to learn ourselves.”

Krause said he expects the physical and e-book to be published during the summer with translations into local languages.