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“I wanted to create something that was purely about Indigenous joy and love. I didn’t want to draw something that was about Indigenous suffering. I wanted to speak on how Indigenous people deserve love and romance and Uk’èts’äldi (He Loves Her) is a step in that direction.”
-Cole Pauls
THANK YOUs
My partner Kirsten Hatfield, Jordanna George, Whess Harman, Erica Wilk, my parents, my grandparents, my uncle and my “auntie” haha!
Uk’èts’äldi (He Loves Her) is dedicated to my grandparents, Jack and Millie Pauls. Married Sept 16th 1960, last year would have been their 63rd anniversary
Tla’ūth – Mildred Louise Pauls
March 14 1942 – July 21 2023
BIO
Cole Pauls is a Champagne and Aishihik Citizen and Tahltan comic artist, illustrator, and printmaker hailing from Haines Junction (Yukon Territory). He holds a BFA in Illustration from Emily Carr University. Residing in Vancouver, Pauls has created three graphic novels: Dakwäkãda Warriors (2019), Pizza Punks (2021) and Kwändür (2022). In 2017, Pauls won Broken Pencil Magazine’s Best Comic and Best Zine of the Year Award for Dakwäkãda Warriors II. In 2020, Dakwäkãda Warriors won Best Work in an Indigenous Language from the Indigenous Voices Awards and was nominated for the Doug Wright Award categories The Egghead & The Nipper. In 2022, Artspeak gallery, Vancouver, held the first solo exhibition of Pauls’ work, Dazhän Kwändür ch’e (This is a Story). In 2023, Kwändür won the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize from the BC & Yukon Book Prize.
