Q&A: Katłįà Lafferty’s latest book shares Dene perspective on climate

Yellowknives Dene author Katłįà Lafferty has released her latest book offering a northern Indigenous perspective on the climate crisis.

Mother Earth is Our Elder features stories and reflections from Dene Elders and knowledge carriers across the NWT about the land and water, and what we can learn from them today.

“The stories resonate and make you think differently,” Lafferty said during the launch of Mother Earth is Our Elder at Yellowknife Books.

Among the people that share stories in the book is George Mandeville.

“The way it used to be is that we didn’t have cameras or anything to record whatever was happening on the land, so the only form of communication or passing on knowledge was through this oral history,” he said at the book launch.

Mandeville said he is glad Lafferty is capturing some of that knowledge so it isn’t lost.

Lafferty said she hopes her book will help more people understand who the Dene are and why their stories are important.

“It’s our time to tell our stories in the way that we want them told,” she said.

Lafferty was the first climate writer in residence at the West Vancouver Memorial Library.

Mother Earth is Our Elder is Lafferty’s fourth book. She is also the author of This House is Not a Home, Land-Water-Sky / Ndè-Tı-Yat’a, and the memoir Northern Wildflower.

This interview was recorded on April 8, 2026. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Emily Blake: What inspired you to write this book?

Katłįà Lafferty: A lot of reasons and mostly because we’re no longer sitting next to our Elders and listening like we used to and learning about the teachings and the stories that they know so well.

So I wanted to capture those stories, and I wanted to capture that from across the North. The way to do that was through sitting and visiting with everyone, all the contributors in the book, and listening to what they had to say, opening the discussion about climate change, but also just talking about the different analogies from our ancient stories and how they are relevant today.

What are you hoping people will take away from this book?

I’m hoping that people will understand our stories from the perspective of those telling them, and understand the nuances of metaphor and bridging reality to story, and being open minded to understanding things from a different viewpoint. And also understanding spirituality from a non-religious perspective and how that interplays with the land, and the water, and all the beings that exist, and how we must care for them.

I also just really want to make sure that the Dene are on the map, because a lot of people don’t know who the Dene are. I hope that this book will help people to open their eyes and understand who we are and where we are from and why our stories matter, because a lot of the world doesn’t really know about what’s happening in the Arctic, and I think this will really just give that understanding. It’s our time to tell our stories in the way that we want them told.

The title Mother Earth is Our Elder, what does that mean to you?

Mother Earth is our oldest, oldest Elder, and we need to take care of her.

There’s a lot of Elder abuse happening in our communities. I make the analogy that right now, corporate greed and capitalism and colonialism and these world-dominating leaders are abusing Mother Earth for gain, and we need to understand that that can’t happen any more.

I also wanted to bring in the concepts of exploiting Mother Earth as a woman. When you’re pillaging the land, you’re harming Mother Nature. Cindy Allen, one of the contributors in the book, says it best. She says: “She will no longer take that harm against her silently any more.” And we see the rupture that resource extraction has had, where Mother Earth is sort of pushing back, like “enough is enough.”

So I try to make those analogies for people to understand in a way where it becomes personal. It’s not just man versus nature. We’re interconnected with Mother Earth, whether we like it or not.

Can you share a highlight from the book?

I talk about beavers. I mean, there’s a beaver on the front cover. Beavers are really, really important for keeping the ecosystem balanced. But there was a time when giant beavers walked the Earth and they caused a lot of problems for the Dene people. And two hero brothers came and saved the Dene people from these giant beavers that were causing all this mass chaos.

There is a rock in the Sahtu called Bear Rock where three giant beaver pelts are a landmark formation on that rock. There’s a story that says Yamozha and Yamoria killed those giant beavers and put them on that rock, and their oil dripped down into the Earth. And actually, in that place – in that very location, not too far from there – is where the first oil deposit in the Northwest Territories was ever found. That’s not a coincidence that that story exists, and that we talk about the oil, because the Dene already knew that was there long before it was “discovered.”

To take it one step further, I bring in the impacts of the dams that we have upstream right now. We have three dams upstream that are impacting our waterways, the Bennett, Site C and the Taltson. So they are holding back water, causing drought, and then when they release water, they cause flooding. And I make the analogy that maybe those giant beavers that once wreaked havoc on us have come back in a different form, because what is a hydro dam if nothing but a giant beaver dam?

So there’s those kind of things that you’ll find throughout the book, those kind of clues. I bring them forward for the reader to ponder. But there’s stories that I rely on, that I fall back on, that I bring into the here and now to see if they’re relevant, and how they’re relevant, and how we can think about them today, because they are still very, very much a part of the discourse today.

With this knowledge, what does it mean or what can we learn from it in the moment that we are in right now?

It means we need to listen to our Elders, and it means we need to go back to those stories to uncover clues of how we’re supposed to be taking care of the land and water. Because those lessons and those teachings are found in those stories, and we haven’t listened to them. We’ve scoffed at those stories, thinking that they’re just fable, but they’re actually much more than that. They’re prophetic and they’ve given warnings that we haven’t heeded.

So we need to bring them back and really look at them very closely and try to interpret them with the knowledge of the Elders included, and the youth, and sit together and go back through those stories and say, “OK, what is this really teaching us right now?”

Who would you say this book is for? Who would you like to read this book?

Youth across the territory, I want them to read it in their classrooms and have discussions about what they’ve read. There’s a lot of climate anxiety, and I think that some of the teachings in the book will help alleviate that climate anxiety among young people.

I also think that it should be read by southerners who don’t know the difference between the Yukon territory and the Northwest Territories. I think just anyone who picks up the book will be able to read it and take away something from it.

The first chapter sets the groundwork for situating the reader in the Northwest Territories and Denendeh and where we are from. So it talks a lot about languages and land-based teachings. And I do that just to kind of set the foundation.

And then the last chapter talks a lot about spirituality, medicine power and those kind of things. I left that to the very end so that people would work towards having to get to that. Like, they’re not going to be able to just jump to the very end, they have to work for that knowledge.