Storyteller says teachers can help reduce conflict

Louis Bird, 79, never set out to be a storyteller. It’s hard to believe when you see him sitting on stage at the Daniels Spectrum centre in Regent Park, far from his traditional homeland, captivating his Toronto audience for almost two hours, pulling story after story from the hundreds in his repertoire.

Bird, with a sense of the Trickster about him, took his audience on a journey into the past, into the heartland of the Omushkego territory and into the heart and soul of his people.

Bird, who is from the isolated Cree community of Peawanuck in Ontario, started hearing the traditional stories of the Hudson Bay Omushkego when he was five years old sitting on his grandmother’s lap. He began memorizing them, using his siblings as his first audience. There were people who only had to hear a story once or twice, “but me, I have to listen about 10 times at least,” he said, laughing.

He was recently in Toronto for the annual Storytelling Festival held March 21 to March 24. He did a number of workshops, including one designed for teachers and librarians on teaching First Nations stories in the schools. Bird was joined by Cherokee storyteller Gayle Ross. Self-described apprentice Hilary McWatch moderated the workshop.

Bird told the audience of about 60 people that he became alarmed when he realized ““that our culture was slipping away every year… We began to lose our language. We began to lose our Elders and we don’t have any more of that storytelling we used to enjoy when we were small.”

He attributed this to the distractions confronting First Nations youth “in this fast-advancing civilized world” with things like phones and video games.

“These are exciting things,” he said, “and our cultures now begin to be put on the back burner.” The stories, he said, are not as exciting to our children because they are not in English.

“It’s a sad thing,” Bird said. He went on to explain that the stories are a way of teaching children and young people about the culture and values, mysteries, and the interconnectedness of all life. Children are taught about the circle of life, and what appears to be just a funny story, he said, contains a life lesson. Not only were the stories teaching children how to respect life, but also how to enjoy all life in their environment.

The stories change as one gets older, he said, with five different versions of the same story; “kids versions all the way to Elder version.” The storyteller’s skill is delivering the right version to the right audience.

“With old people, you don’t have to worry about which one to use,” said Bird.

Cherokee storyteller Gayle Ross began telling stories when she was in third grade when she was faced with a situation involving forgotten homework. Her audience was so receptive, she recalls, that storytelling became a passion for her. She too learned the stories from her grandmother who she described as the family historian and family storyteller.
“You have to teach about the truth of our history and the truth about our contemporary existence,” Ross advised the educators in the audience. She said teachers too often focus on our past, getting the children to build wigwams and tipis and study how we dressed in the past.

“In some ways,” she said, “we are the most caricatured, most stereotyped people on the planet!”

“You do carry a great responsibility,” Ross told the teachers, and one that can only be fulfilled by reaching out to the community, doing research and separating the genuine from what she called, “the perverted permutations of our culture by those who would appropriate our identity.” Doing this, she said, will help overcome generations of misunderstanding and conflict.

“But just as we cannot be separated from the land, our culture and our stories cannot be separated from the people from whom they came,” Ross warned.

Speaking to Bird’s concern about cultural loss, Ross talked about a number of initiatives launched by the Cherokee nation to preserve the culture and language. Generating interest in the young people has to be combined with making the Elders feel valued for the knowledge they carry.

Oral history projects in high school where students seek out stories from Elders and older relatives, immersion language programs, teachers learning the stories, and having the Cherokee language available as an iPhone app have helped the Cherokee nation make significant strides in cultural preservation in the last 12 years.

“You have to go to where the youth are at,” Ross said, “and incorporate technology in order to engage them.”

Both Ross and Bird are published writers. Among others, Ross’ works include How Rabbit Tricked Otter, and How Turtle’s Back was Cracked. Bird’s books include Telling Our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay, and, Spirit Lives in the Mind: Omushkego Stories, Lives and Dreams.