World Storytelling Day

March 20 is World Storytelling day and around the globe tellers will gather and share. Not just the 20th, but on dates near it. In Saskatchewan the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Literacy Network Inc. and the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre
 help coordinate events around the province and I was able to get to several such affairs in and around Saskatoon. This fabulous piece, titled Circles Close was designed and crafted by Leah Dorion was used as major drawing card by the SALN. You can see an array of her work at her website.

I have already written about the Saturday night get-together at the Wanuskewin Heritage Park.

A major event, designed primarily for school children, was actually two events, two weeks apart, at the SICC’s White Buffalo Youth Lodge. I was able to get to part of both days and meet up with Barry Akenakew and Darryl Chamakese, who were both so helpful in sharing stories and letting me use them in Of Moose and Men. I was more or less lost in the crowd of several hundred children from schools all over the city, but I did have a chance to meet and listen to new-to-me tellers and heard new stories.

John Spyglass had four sessions, two on the 15th, and two more on the 29^th. He is an experienced teller and delights in using his large collection of artifacts to build his stories.  With pupils from the smallest grades he used a mixture of reading, games and “dressing up” to keep the children enthralled for some eighty minutes – quite an achievement for this age group.

 

 

One thing he did was classic. About 45 minutes in, when the children might have become restive, he suddenly switched and got all the kids (and the teachers) going with versions of “Incy Wincy Spider” (aka itsy bitsy spider). Of course they started with the standard one, but John then took it all to new levels by having us perform the rhyme in various voices, angry, sad, funny, quiet, loud and so on.

On either side of the rhyme he showed us many different pieces of traditional art. A beautifully decorated cradleboard and moss bag had a big doll inside it and one of the children must have had a memorable moment when she was selected to wear it. Other children donned headdresses and various garments.

In the session on leap day John’s audience were older – from grade nine. The room was packed and John changed up his performance to fit the group. Partly because we hardly had room to move and partly because of the ages of the audience he only demonstrated the various items. Here he is holding a buffalo headdress as he explains its significance.

 I leap-frogged between various sessions but made sure that I heard Barry Ahenakew’s wonderful tale of the buffalo child in full. Like many (maybe most?) good stories this one can go on for a long time, but Barry crafted it to fit the time available. Of course I am not going to even try to re-create Barry’s telling, with is voice changes, actions and mood swings, but basically the story revolves around the challenges faced by a young boy who grows up among buffalo (bison) but returns to his human village to marry and have children. He goes back and forth between the two societies, shape-shifting all the while. For the ending, you will have to find a way of hearing the story from Barry.

Darryl was not so much a teller during these two days as he was a facilitator, but I did manage to capture a quick snap of him and Barry, with crowd of children behind them at the end of the morning session.

I was only able to take in one other event. Elaine Greyeyes, daughter of renowned storyteller, the late Freda Ahenakew gave us an account of her mother’s legacy. Freda compiled, edited and wrote twenty books of Cree stories. As Elaine said, her  mother was preserving the culture in an important way.  We both feel that the writing down of these stories is vital. At a time when so may old cultures are falling under the hammer of lost language, modern toys (smart phones and the like) and a general wish of the younger generation to “modernize” the ancient stories, be they from Africa, Canada or any other culture, can only be preserved in the writing.

One Cree elder told me that by writing the stories one kills them. Most of the people I have met, and all those I have mentioned in this post, agree that they are not so much killed as placed into suspended animation. When re-told they are resurrected. Indeed that may often be adapted ot the audience, something that is often a vital part of the storytelling craft.

Wanuskewin Stories

In Saskatchewan February is Aboriginal Storytelling month.


On Saturday the 25^th a small but enthusiastic crowd braved a nasty storm to get themselves to the Wanuskewin Heritage Park (found here)This is the striking entrance to the building.





As one enters the main section another buffalo, surrounded by hangings, stands out.

We all had the chance to wander round the gallery and admire the fascinating collection of materials dedicated to the horse. There was a full-sized horse front and centre, and some forty paintings, many by Allan Sapp, of scenes depicting the use of the horse in (relatively) modern times. The most striking items were five beautifully decorated elk hides, each one depicting scenes of some brutality, with horse-mounted cavalry and aboriginal peoples at war. It was not until I leaned over and took a close look at the work under the glass covers that I realized that every item in the entire series, containing hundreds of figures in excruciating detail, down to pistols, head dresses and the caps of the cavalry, was created with beads, thousand of tiny beads.  It would have been great to be able to show you a picture of at least one of the hides, but of course galleries do not allow one to take them, and I could not get hold of one electronically. If I get the chance I will post again, as they are truly stunning.

Andrew McDonald, the marketing and sales manager of the centre, had organized the evening’s events and it was he who told me, in an email, that these beaded elk hides were given to the Wanuskewin Heritage Park by George Pekwawa for the Mistatim Exhibit. The hides depict the Battle of Little Bighorn, where Chief Sitting Bull defeated General Custer. It is thought that descendants of Sitting Bull, who fought in the battle, created the works. Following the battle Sitting Bull found asylum here in Saskatchewan where he stayed at Ft Walsh. The hides are thought to be based on a series of drawings that Chief Red Cloud was later commissioned for.

Before the main event we had a chance to sample Chef Kevin Merasty's delicious berry crumble, mostly Saskatoon berries, as you might expect, and everyone who had braved the winds had a bowl of his creation and a dollop of ice cream. Hot chocolate optional. Not too shabby!

 
Lamarr Oksasikewiyin of the Traditional Native Games Organization (found here) led off the activities, focusing on the children who had come out on a stormy night. He first got everyone involved in one of the oldest indoor games, which most of us learned at a very early age. Here you can see one of the parents about to pass on her start to the string game. 

Lamarr then began with children’s games that were originally designed as preparation for the vital art of hunting or for learning patience in the harsh dark days of winter. He told us that the storm was a hidden blessing as it was on nights like this that games and storytelling became important because it mirrors the winter camp and times in the tipi. He had the youngsters playing a game we all recognized. Today we can purchase a fancy version called pick-up sticks. The old version involved willow twigs, and Lamarr selected a marker that was the key to unlocking the fallen sticks. The kids were quickly involved.

Then he called for volunteers, who promptly stood and started to try and hit a ten centimetre toy bison with a weighted turkey feather from a range of about two paces. Of course the two paces varied with the size of the child. It is not as easy as it sounds. You can see the bison (pale brown, hanging on a string) right of centre about 1/3 of the way from the top, level with the top of the window. No wonder there were no hits.

While the other adults visited the gallery I stayed to watch the puppet show being put on by Cheryl Hoftyzer. I've been trying to post a short clip here for the last 45 minutes, but the Blogger program is having a hissy fit. It is defintely home movie stuff as the lighting was not the best, so perhaps it doesn't matter. Cheryl ran the puppets as we learned the entrancing the story of the beaver and his tail with its moral issues about pride.

Alex Ahenakew gave us part of his family history after explaining the importance of the smudge. As he performed this ancient ceremony his grandson joined him and then a little girl who could not have been more than about two, left her father’s lap in the story circle, crossed the floor and went over to lean into the smoke spiral. She has obviously been shown the ropes. Alex wound up with a delightful explanation of his maternal grandfather’s name, which is Atimoyoo, or in English, dog’s tail. It involved shape shifting and the acquisition of a beautiful horse.

Darryl Chamakese, seen here in the checked shirt beyond his audience is the Cree language developer at of the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre (found here). It was he who gave me two fascinating stories for my book Of Moose and Men (publishers web info here). Darryl did a wonderful job with one of the many Wesakechak stories, this one about the time that the hero of that long-running saga fooled a bunch of waterfowl into giving up their lives for his meal, only to be outwitted by that cunning carnivore, the fox. Of course in the end Wesakechak got his revenge and forever changed the coat colour of the wily beast.

Finally Lisa Wilson gave us a brief reading from her history of the Gabriel Dumont Institute. You can find out more about the institute here.

Then it was time to head home. Luckily the storm had abated, but we did hear that further south it had been severe enough to lead to closure of some highways. A good evening to be indoors with like-minded people and out of the cold.