Telling indigenous ‘Fresh Stories’
As has become the norm for this time of year, there’s so much going on that it’s hard to keep up with it all.
Last Wednesday, the summer solstice, was also National Aboriginal Day, now renamed National Indigenous Peoples Day. Today it’s Saint-Jean-Baptiste or the National Holiday in Quebec; Canadian Multiculturalism Day happens Tuesday, June 27, and, of course, the 150th Canada Day is a week away.
A cluster of major events in Waterloo Region are organized in conjunction with these designations, including Summer Lights in Kitchener and the Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts in Cambridge last weekend; the 50th K-W Multicultural Festival today and tomorrow, and the Kultrún World Music Festival on July 8 and 9.
I got a note this week from master storyteller Carol Leigh Wehking about an event she is organizing that is related to all this, but on a smaller scale. Just back from a trip to Newfoundland and Labrador, she realized that there were “significant gaps” in promoting this special Canada Day storytelling offering and asks for help getting word out.
Wehking is one of the forces behind the “Fresh Stories” sessions at Monigram Coffee Roasters in Cambridge on the third Friday of every month from September to May. The last regular Fresh Stories session of the season was held in conjunction with the Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts on June 16, but they’re planning one more special presentation for Wednesday, June 28.
Wehking expresses serious misgivings about Canada Day: “I have always felt uncomfortable celebrating something that honours the settler government of a geographical space long occupied by people who were here long before the name and the government and the colonialists and other immigrants.”
So for this year, as part of her personal commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action to redress the legacy of residential schools, she resolved to present a First Nations storytelling program for Canada Day.
She notes that these stories are being presented a few days before the actual holiday, “from tellers whose people were here before ‘Canada’.”
For guidance in planning such a program, Wehking called on her longtime friend, Mohawk artist Elizabeth Doxtater, who was the featured teller at Fresh Stories last October.
Born and raised on the Six Nations Grand River Territory, Elizabeth Doxtater is best known for her work within the traditional art form of cornhusk sculpting. This artwork emerged out of a personal dedication to understanding the formation of the Great Law of Peace, the constitution of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee, or the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Great Law of Peace was conceived by Dekanawidah, known as The Great Peacemaker. These laws have been transmitted over the centuries orally and through symbols conveying meaning woven in wampum belts.
The artist has created elaborate dioramas utilizing dolls and other sculptural forms shaped out of cornhusks retelling the Peacemaker’s journey and related Haudenosaunee traditions.
When approached by Wehking about doing something suitable for Canada Day 2017, Doxtater referred her to a collective of young artists that she’s been working with known as the “Group of Six.”
Storytelling and oral traditions have always been a fundamental part of indigenous cultures, but it is usually associated with elders. In this case, we’re hearing from young people newly trained in these traditions willing to share their own stories, hence the title of the program: “Voices Yet to Come.”
The final step was finding a venue. Wehking reports that Sandra Sydor from Idea Exchange “was very receptive and enthusiastic when we approached her with this idea; we are delighted that the library has been such a support.”