Alina Pete is a nehiyaw (Cree) artist and writer from Little Pine First Nation in western Saskatchewan. They grew up urban, but spent summers wandering the Qu'Appelle valley with their cousin from Cowessess First Nation. Alina is best known for their Aurora award-winning webcomic, Weregeek (weregeek.com), but they also write short stories, poems and RPG supplements, and their work has been featured in several comic anthologies, including Moonshot volumes 2 and 3. Alina lives in Surrey with their partner and three very silly parrots who enjoy sitting on their shoulder as they write.
We caught up with Alina Pete to ask them about Alina drawing inspiration from popular culture and telling tales from modern Indigenous life
You’re the editor of Indiginerds: Tales from Modern Indigenous Life. What did you learn creating comics alongside so many talented Indigenous artists and storytellers?
God, I learned so much! The main thing I learned is that there’s no end to how creative we Indigenous folks are. When I first put out the call for submissions, I expected a fairly diverse group of stories, but I was blown away by what we got. Everything from building sustainable communities centered around podcasts/radio shows, to streamers teaching traditional language skills, to using pirate radio stations to organize protests… Indigenous folks have used every bit of technology that comes our way to build up and support our communities.
Another theme within the stories was the importance of seeing ourselves represented in media. Even when that representation has been poor or controversial, such as the tribal themes of the Tauren in World of Warcraft or the regrettable episode of Star Trek: The Next Generations, Dorvan V. Having a world where our kids can see themselves represented on screen or in books is vitally important!
Within the stories in Indiginerds, Indigenous youth cleverly blend tradition and pop culture—like using video games to teach language skills and building cultural spaces in virtual reality. How has pop culture inspired your work as an artist and storyteller?
Without pop culture, I never would have been a comic artist or a writer! I used to watch cartoons on VHS and would pause them throughout the show so I could try and draw the characters on screen. I also collected manga and a few different superhero comics, and would trace my favourite panels. That’s how I taught myself to draw.
I also was a voracious reader, and went through most of the sci-fi and fantasy section at my local library. This was really useful for my mom, who was a single Native mother putting herself through university at the time. So she’d bring me to the University library and set me up with some comics and drawing paper and I’d keep myself busy for hours at a time while she studied. We always went out for ice cream afterward, so Study Days were a great treat for me!
In Lost at Windy River: A True Story of Survival, you collaborated with colourist Jillian Dolan to illustrate an epic (and true) survival story set in Northern Canada. How did you prepare to illustrate the historical and cultural details included in the story?
I knew that we really wanted to get the details in this book as accurate as possible, because Ilse Schweder’s story had already been misrepresented in Farley Mowat’s book, People of the Deer. I believe that part of the reason Trina Rathgeber wrote this book was to tell her grandmother’s story more factually and accurately.
As we were first conceptualizing this book, Trina provided me with a huge collection of historical photos and documents. Some of them were newspaper articles about Ilse’s survival, and others were features about the trapper who found her, Ragnar Jonsson. In fact, the panel in the book that first introduces Ragnar is drawn directly from the news article about his life. I also heavily referenced the types of dog sleds that her family used at the time, as well as their winter clothing.
I did make a few modifications. I added a fringed red cape to Ilse’s outfit so that she would stand out amongst her brothers and sisters in the winter scenes, and so that she’d be easy to distinguish in some of the sweeping vistas she’s lost amidst. In reality, her outfit was the same worn by her siblings, a parka of caribou hide with a simple belt around the middle to hold her tools. I also changed the way she wrapped her face in a thick blanket so that we could see her expressions. But I tried to stick to the actual historical representations as much as possible. This includes the maps shown throughout the book, one of which was drawn by hand by Ilse’s father.
You’ll be touring for the upcoming Canadian Children’s Book Week, sharing stories from Indigenerds and Lost at Windy River, and talking to students about positive representation. What are you looking forward to about touring for Book Week?
I’m most looking forward to meeting the classes I’ll be speaking with! Being able to actually see your audience as you tell them a story is such a great experience, and one that authors rarely get. Plus, I’m really interested to chat with the older classes and hear what media teens are into these days. It’s always cool when one of my younger cousins mentions being really into music that I listened to when I was a kid, and I think that one of the upsides of TikTok is that music really spans generations now. And borders! I’ve been listening to a lot of cool new Indigenous metal bands from around the world thanks to TikTok!
I’m also very excited to see the Yukon. I’ve never been there, though I have travelled to the Northwest Territories. My grandmother was a counsellor there for several years when I was a kid, and I was lucky enough to be able to spend a whole summer with her in Rae, near Yellowknife. We went fishing, boating around the Great Bear Lake, and took lots of hikes. I think I still have a sketchbook full of landscapes and drawings of lichen that I drew while I was visiting. I miss the north, and it’ll be wonderful to see it again.
Alina Pete will be touring as part of Canadian Children's Book Week 2025. Keep up to date with her latest projects by following @alinapete_art on Instagram.
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Written by Spencer Miller