Catherine Attla's version (1990) has twenty-five episodes, and it is likely that the full story contains a few more episodes.
She indicates that his medicine power is greater than hers with the enigmatic statement, "Yes, grandchild, your heart is tied way, way up there" (Attla 1989: 45).
To escape he wills, "I hope a big porcupine from a faraway land where everything is big chews (the bindings) off me" (Attla 1983: 145).
Catherine Attla has indicated that because of this excessive killing, people do not like to tell this story very often (Attla 1989: 399).
As the danger to Ggaadoogga increases with each conflict, so does the amount of time Catherine Attla takes in relating it.
Catherine Attla and other Koyukon storytellers make such repetitions, they often say the word very slowly and softly, drawing out the first syllable, as in ghe -- kkaat [long pause] ghe -- kkaat.
The first part discusses various classifications of Dena oral literature, including those of Jette and Chapman and of Native people themselves, including Catherine Attla. The second part examines the various characters that appear in the stories and their cultural meaning.
Although de Laguna's commentary is not as lengthy or detailed as Thompson's (1990) analysis of Attla's 1990 story collection, it does not need to be, in part because one can also draw on Thompson's work.
In all three of these chapters, de Laguna draws on the stories recorded by Jette and Chapman, and especially those told by Catherine Attla, to provide a very useful comparative analysis of all the published Dena stories from Alaska's central interior.
Traditional Koyukon Athabaskan stories told by Catherine Attla. Transcribed by Eliza Jones.
The content of Attla's story is challenging and requires a knowledge of, or desire to learn, Inuit culture.
Like Attla's story, told in Athapaskan, this book is designed in two columns.