Illustrated tales introduce us to the world without borders of Dene shamans. Bear, fox, beaver, loon, butterfly and spider can pass their gifts onto humans. The shamans derive their powers from their own contacts with animal persons.

Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau compiled her Contes de la mythologie athapaskanne (Tales from Athapaskan Mythology) based on Marie-Françoise Guédon's book Le rêve et la forêt, Histoires de chamanes nabesna. The tales describe the needs, problems and even the errors of the community that created them. The artist has made them her own, not as one might hoard a treasure, but out of a desire to share them as a revelation. The seemingly peaceful images are an illusion: the shamans are on the watch. Wily Beaver will learn it soon enough.

The animal characters in the tales Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau chose to illustrate are all subject to the great laws of the living world. Their characteristics and tribulations provide these fables and legends their substance and their grasp on reality.

Without them, the world of human beings would be only solitude and darkness. Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau, more accustomed to the large scale and broad gestures of painting, chose to explore the patient craft of engraving: an introspective mood permeates her images inhabited by hieratic beings busily untangling the mysteries of the worlds.