Support Spokane Arts’ work to foster creativity & culture in our region for years to come by donating today! Your gift of any amount helps us continue impactful programs, public art projects, and direct granting to artists, arts organizations, & creative businesses! Learn more about all the ways to support here!

Grantee: Scablands Books

Project Title: Baby Speaks Salish Book Publication
Year awarded: 2019, Round 2

With support from SAGA, Scablands Books will publish a graphic novel, Baby Speaks Salish, by local writer Emma Noyes. Proceeds will go to the Salish School of Spokane, which is dedicated to keeping the interior Salish languages alive in the face of ongoing colonialism.

Baby Speaks Salish by artist, researcher, and writer Emma Noyes (Sinixt Band of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation) is a vital, visually stunning instruction manual for parents who wish to speak interior Salish (Colville-Okanogan) with their babies and toddlers. Noyes includes important discussion of the deleterious colonial erasure of indigenous communities in our region while also delighting in language and illustration. This is a book that truly celebrates motherhood and indigeneity.

Copies of the book are expected to be available in February 2020.