The art of native storytelling

Something happens when a person hears the words once upon a time, a long time ago. They shift into a different state of consciousness. Their senses activate. Their breath changes.

That exchange of breath between listener and storyteller, said Roger Fernandes, an artist, storyteller, and educator of the Lower Elwha S’Klallum tribe, is called the Sacred Breath.

“Essentially, the sacred breath is what you breathe out when you’re speaking, and the audience breathes it in and gives it life. Stories are living things.”

Fernandes didn’t start out as a storyteller. He grew up hundreds of miles away from the Lower Elwha S’Kallum reservation. He wanted to be an artist.

However, the Indian Education Act of 1974 went into effect shortly after he graduated college, so he applied and took a job at Highline Schools. There, amidst his young students, the power of storytelling took hold.

“If you look at Native children in public schools, they tend to struggle,” Fernandes explains. But it’s not for lack of potential—studies showed Native children entering Kindergarten were bright, sociable, eager to learn.”

One semester, Fernandes accompanied a Native storyteller around the school, classroom to classroom. He heard the same stories 10, 20 times, and thought about all the research that showed children learn through story, fantasy, and play.

“All at once, my path became clear. That’s what I’m going to do,” he recalls. “I’m going to tell Native stories to Native children. I am going to tell them the stories of their ancestors.” And that’s what he did for the next forty years.

Cynthia LaPlant, a member of the Puyallup Tribe, teaches Lushootseed language at the Grandview Early Learning Center. Photo by Joshua Huston

Finding meaning

Oral storytelling is fundamental to many Native American cultures.

The Salishan languages in the Pacific Northwest were spoken languages, so oral storytelling served as a connective tissue, binding cultural values, history, tradition, and philosophy into an art that is both entertaining and educational.

Most traditional oral stories are open for interpretation. According to Mary Jane Topash, a member of the Tulalip Tribe and assistant director for cultural initiatives at Seattle’s Burke Museum, each story offers many takeaways, and listeners’ interpretations change over time, as they grow up.

“I got to listen to traditional stories as a child, but as I got older, I realized some of the stories I had heard over and over again started to mean something different,” Topash says. “It’s the same story [you’ve] heard dozens of times, but the understanding changes.”

Many traditional stories are origin stories meant to elucidate how the world came into existence. Instead of avoiding heavy philosophical questions, Fernandes embraces them—and so do his young listeners.

“Some of these stories talk about existential stuff—about the meaning of the universe and the meaning of life. But little kids love that kind of conversation, and they’re anxious to have it,” he says. The tradition of oral storytelling offers children perspective on the world in which they live.

Many Coast Salish tribes even share certain stories, although each culture has its own version.

Cynthia LaPlant, a member of the Puyallup Tribe, teaches at the Grandview Early Learning Center, where she first started learning the Coast Salish language Lushootseed as a student almost twenty years ago.

The story of Lady Louse, for example, is told in Tulalip, Puyallup, and other Coast Salish tribes. LaPlant says the story “is different for each tribe, but the essence is the same because the storytelling tradition means each story is unique.”

Stories evolve as time goes on, she says. “Nothing is set in stone, and you’re not supposed to correct people. It’s one of my favorite things about the language.”

Indigenous storytelling in the age of TikTok

The intersection of oral storytelling and modern technology is both exhilarating and discouraging.

Thanks to the Internet, young adults like LaPlant can share and discover stories from all over the country. In fact, LaPlant discovered storytelling nights on Facebook Live before attending in-person storytelling events.

Technology also enables parents and caregivers to introduce storytelling to small children through digital media. Jill LaPointe, of the Upper Skagit/Nooksack, is the senior director of the Indigenous Peoples Institute at Seattle University and director at Lushootseed Research, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and sustaining the Lushootseed language and culture.

One evening LaPointe and her husband were listening to an audio recording of her favorite storyteller, Johnny Moses. Her grandson, just five years old, came into the room, sat down, and listened—mesmerized—to the entire story.

“It totally amazed us,” says LaPointe. But still, she worried something was missing through virtual storytelling.

Historically, the winter months were a sacred time when Indigenous families and communities would spend hours telling stories and building relationships, explains LaPointe.

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“The storytellers that I was brought up with would often pause and wait for the audience to say ‘habu,’ which kind of means ‘I’m engaged,’” she says. “It was a relationship.”

Topash agrees.

“Hearing a story in the longhouse, surrounded by family and community—you can’t get that on paper or on a screen,” she said.

“These days, technology is so powerful that people watch entire ‘live’ performances on tiny screens—and they may not even know what they are missing.”

Words trapped on a page

Over the past several decades, Coast Salish tribes have translated their language into the written word—devising an alphabet, transcribing stories, and developing teaching materials for the next generation.

“Having it recorded, written, and saved, of course, is a huge goal, and important,” says Topash. “But you lose some of the magic, some of the animation. If the characters walk, the storytellers walk; if the animal jumps, the storyteller jumps.”

“It’s one thing to type in ALL CAPS,” she says,“ but if the story called for the character to yell, the storyteller would actually yell.”

Reading is usually a solitary endeavor, says Fernandes. “It’s an internal process.”

Written stories also rarely change—occasionally, nonfiction books are updated for the era, but for the most part, once published, a fictional story remains the same forever.

“I love to read,” says Fernandes. “But that story is trapped in the pages of the book. It never gets the chance to transform.”

“Storytelling comes from the memory of the teller.”

Understanding Native stories

For years, Native Americans have fought to reclaim their cultures and traditions from people who sought to exploit them. In her role at the Burke Museum, Topash tries to bring awareness to these complicated and sometimes fraught situations.

Though she embraces the significance of digitizing Coast Salish stories and traditions, she worries: “Sometimes all this access makes me nervous. I don’t know if people understand how important these stories are.”

Non-Native listeners must remember that even if they are entertaining, Indigenous stories are sacred.

Vi Hilbert was a leader in the movement to reclaim Lushootseed language and traditions. She was also LaPointe’s grandmother and Fernandes’ teacher. She taught Fernandes that the word for storytelling in Lushootseed is “syəhubtxʷ,” which means “the teachings.”

“Storytelling is not entertainment, even if it is entertaining, and it’s not fanciful. It is how you teach children and each other,” he said.

Native American storyteller Roger Fernandes, an artist and educator of the Lower Elwha S’Klallum tribe. Photo by Joshua Huston

Appreciating, not appropriating

Consider as well that many Native elders were forced into boarding schools and punished for speaking their language. Even though LaPlant’s family was proud and supportive of her learning Lushootseed, hearing the language her great-grandfather was forced to abandon can be painful.

Topash offers some insight into how to appreciate and not appropriate Indigenous oral storytelling. First and foremost, give credit and credence to the tribe from which the story originated. Throughout his work, for example, Fernandes names his teachers and honors their gift of storytelling.

Well-meaning educators should consider how to properly include the storytelling tradition in curriculums. Topash often hears teachers ask their students to “write their own origin story like the story they just heard.”

She says this trivializes the significance of Native stories.

“These stories are ancestral,” Topash says. “They come from something: an event, an understanding, an interpretation. So don’t appropriate the process for a lesson plan. Honor the tradition and the tribe, don’t try to make it your own.”

Instead, ask students to research their own origin stories—where did their ancestors come from? What event or experience in their past might be worthy of a story? This way, students can honor the art of storytelling without appropriating it.

As long as birds are flying

Native American storytelling is a tradition that offers listeners the chance to see their world differently. It can enthrall the squirmiest of children and edify the most erudite adults.

“In 40 years, I’ve never had a classroom that was rude or disengaged,” says Fernandes. In fact, he says, “every now and then I get a bit of wisdom from a little kid, a comment that is just so profound, it changes the way I understand the story.”

Storytelling can be a way to speak to children in their language. Fernandes gives the example of a child who comes home from school and says to his mother: “My teacher says the Earth is spinning in space, how can that be true?”

Perhaps this mother tries to explain the force of gravity. But to a 5-year-old, those are just words. What that child is asking, Fernandes says, is, “Am I going to go flying off the earth?”

That’s when a story comes in. Because, says Fernandes, all that little boy wants to know is that he’s safe.

“So tell them when the birds fly, their wings push down the air, which keeps us here, so as long as birds are flying we’ll never fly off the earth,” Fernanes says.

When they get a little older you can tell them about gravity.

In their own words

What is it like learning the ancestral language that was taken from your elders, and to hear and learn the stories of your people in that language? Mary Jane Topash (Tulalip) and Cynthia LaPlant (Puyallup) learned their tribal language as young children and are committed to helping their tribes reclaim their languages, cultures and tell their ancestral stories.

The Sacred Breath: The art of Native American storytelling