Storytellers Festival 2003 March 13 - 19

	7:00 pm - Thursday, March 13 The Exchange 2431 8th Avenue		Storypalooza Featuring guest poets, local poets, new voices, established voices, music and more.
	1:00pm - Friday, March 14 Sâkêwêwak Artists' Collective 2536 11th Avenue		StoryForum Readings and an open discussion on poetry by some of Canada's best-known authors, Al Hunter, Duncan Mercredi and Marie Baker.
	2:30 - Sunday, March 16 Regina Métis Sports and Culture 1235 2nd Avenue North		Traditional Speakers Angela Waskewich, Francis Nepinak.
	6:00pm - Monday, March 17 Regina Métis Sports and Culture 1235 2nd Avenue North		Winter Teachings A range of Storytelling practices - from sacred stories to life teachings - will be presented. Leonard Cote, Francis Bird, Juliette McAdam and Francis McAdam (all from Saskatchewan). Soup and Bannock will be served.
	6:00pm - Tuesday, March 18 Indian Métis Christian Fellowship Centre 3131 Dewdney Avenue		Alternative Knowledge, Re-emerging Histories Our "long-ago" systems of thought and our ways of believing have been kept alive by Storytellers and Historians. These Storytellers will share knowledge relating to astronomy, history and new methodologies. Garry Robson (Manitoba), Sherry Farrell Racette (Saskatchewan), Louise Halfe (Saskatchewan). Soup and Bannock will be served.
	6:00pm - Wednesday, March 19 Indian Métis Christian Fellowship Centre 3131 Dewdney Avenue		Ritual Process, Artistic Expression Aboriginal people have expressed the link between the ritual and the artistic since time immemorial. Our guest Storytellers will discuss the expression of this relationship through song, dance and the material arts. Jerry Saddleback (Alberta), Bob Boyer (Saskatchewan), Doreen Jensen (British Columbia), Dennis Omeasoo (Saskatchewan). Soup and Bannock will be served.

Essay:

In the early eighties, I often worked with seniors who were applying for their pensions and needed assistance in verifying their birth dates. I was sent to a woman from Cowessess First Nation, the deceased Martha Lerat, who was able to verify the approximate birth dates of many elderly people, and she could provide details on the complex family webs from the Crooked Lake Agency area. Martha Lerat had learned this discipline, the ordering cataloguing of our genealogy in memory, from someone before her. This practice, essential in the days when our gene pool was much more limited and marriage patterns were highly codified, endured to serve another practical function in modern terms. Throughout the years that I have endeavored to learn from practicing storytellers, I have discovered, again and again, that our oral traditions have remained relevant. In fact, many of our contemporary triumphs - in the arts, in education, in health care, in land claims and in self-government, have been due to the protean nature of orality, the spoken expression of a Nation, a community, a self.

Four years ago, the members of Sakewewak Artists Collective, and in particular Robin Brass, expressed the desire to create a forum where distinguished storytellers, academics, and artists would be recognized for their contributions to contemporary art practices. The objectives developed at our first steering committee were to encourage the cross-pollination of artistic thought and practice, and to present guest storytellers to diverse urban audiences. During the three years that we have organized the Distinguished Storytellers Series, we have attempted to establish new standards of presentation based upon the particular needs of storytellers. Working to present storytellers, with our experience as contemporary art presenters, had taught us a great deal of letting our own conceptions about the interplay between audiences and artists. We have learned that high production standards, a measure we previously used to qualify success, was not a measure that mattered to the storytellers we had presented. They cared more about the needs of their audiences. Having learned this lesson, we are now presenting at venues near our audiences. The 2003 series is structured around different themes, each arising out specific practices and purposes. To accommodate collaboration among our guest storytellers, they will be speaking within forums, rather than at standalone engagements.

Storypalooza opens our series, a performance event planned with input from our members and featuring guest poets, Duncan Mercredi, Marie Baker and Al Hunter. On the following day, Storyforum will be a time our guest poets and local poets to discuss the craft of poetry. Because storytelling takes many forms, we invite our audiences to attend the contemporary events as a starting point. The mediums of poetry, lyric and song, familiar to many of us in urban centres, serves as an introduction to the rest of our program.

Our traditional speakers, Angelina Waskewich and Francis Nepinak will talk to people in the old tradition of counseling speeches. Most often delivered at ceremony, counseling speeches are a time-honored method of preserving values within an evolving culture. Angelina Waskewich, nee Jimmy, is a highly respected ceremonialist from Onion Lake, Saskatchewan whose knowledge comes from a lifelong commitment to Cree traditions. Francis Nepinak from Pine Creek First Nation. Like many storytellers, his practice is multifaceted. In addition to his knowledge on Treaty Four history, his ability to counsel people traditionally is contemporized in his work as an addictions counselor.

The next forum, Winter Teachings will present concepts that are part of our master narratives, the winter cycle stories. These winter cycle stories are sacred stories that begin with our genesis, before the creation of earth and humans. The emerging central figures in our master narratives, our elder brothers, Wesakechak and Nenabose, will be the focus of the winter teachings forum. Juliette and Francis McAdam, from Big River First Nation have traveled extensively across Canada and have discovered threads in our master narratives that run through many nations. Francis Bird and Leonard Cote, who retain the old practice of cohort verification, return once again this year, but this time they will be telling winter stories about Nenabose, the Anishinabe trickster.

Alternative Knowledge, Re-emerging Histories is a forum that will bring together academics and educators with specialized cultural knowledge. These storytellers have spent many years conducting research that uncover histories long buried in archives or in memory. It could be said that these storytellers are on the cutting edge of the storytelling form. Sherry Farrell-Racette, a prominent Regina academic, will present her research on how economics affected the cultural production of Métis women in western Canada. Garry Robson, from Winnipeg, will talk about the traditional Ojibway clan system, an ordering of the Anishinabe Nation once widespread from East to West. Our guest poet and storyteller at this forum, Louise Halfe will speak about giving voice to the re-emerging stories through her work. Finally, Maria Campbell, a highly respected storyteller, will present part of her research into the use of landscape as a mnemonic device.

Our last forum, Ritual Process, Artistic Expression will present senior artist whose work if firmly placed within the framework of the material arts and the cultural arts. Doreen Jensen, a West coast carver and teacher, bridges both the visual arts and the cultural arts in her practice. Bob Boyer, a Regina painter, is one of our preeminent art historians. He will speak about the genesis of First Nations arts production and the dilemma of categorization with in the western art history tradition. Dennis Omeasoo and Jerry Saddleback are both pow-wow practitioners from Hobemma, Alberta. Their gift of critical thought and their tallents as traditional artists, places them in a unique position to speak about how their cultural practices are informed by their spiritual beliefs.

Our oral traditions are not only beautiful, practical and durable, but are of themselves paradigms from which we can derive understanding of the past and present self-concepts. In his seminal work, The Man Made of Words, Kiowa writer and academic N. Scott Momaday expresses the idea that we are the sum of the stories we know about ourselves. In other words, the narrative that we participate in, that we live within, is our existence. Therefore, to embrace our oral traditions is to live in a larger world, because storytelling contains whole worlds and narrative is endless.

Lynn Acoose
Artistic Director
Distinguished Storytellers Series

Biographies:

Doreen May Jensen
Hahl Yee is the name given to Doreen Jensen by her family, from whom she learned the oral history, language, songs, legends and customs of the Gixsan people. The name belongs to the Killerwhale family crest from the House of Geel of the Firewood Clan. Jensen is a widely recognized representative of the First Nations people of B.C. In 1983, she curated a major exhibition at the Museum of Anthropology, Robes of Power: Totem Poles on Cloth and wrote an accompanying book on Northwest Coast art. She has also organized and supervised exhibitions of carving, and narrated video programs for educational use.

Artist, curator, writer, teacher, historian and cultural leader, Jensen maintains strong community involvement that includes being a member of the Native Writers Association, Director of the Professional Native Women's Association, Director of the Vancouver Native Development Village, and a founding member of both the 'Ksan Village Association and the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry. She has also given willingly her time to serve on countless provincial and federal cultural committees. In recognition of her work, Jensen has been awarded the Golden Eagle Feather from the Professional native Women's Association and honoured with a name given by James Sewid and his family at one of their potlatches. Jensen received the Woman of Distinction Award for Arts & Culture from the Y.W.C.A. in 1993.

Al Hunter
Al Hunter is Anishinaabe from Manitou Rapids, Rainy River First Nations. He has published his poetry in many journals and anthologies, including, Rampike; Canadian Literature; Boyhood, Growing Up Male: A Multi-cultural Anthology; Poets Who Haven't Moved to Minneapolis; North Coast Review; New Breed; and Gatherings. His work is featured along with Jim Northrup, Denise Sweet and Adrian Louis in the acclaimed anthology, Days of Obstained, Days of Grace, Poetry & Prose by Four Native American Writers published by Poetry Harbor, Duluth, MN, 1995. Hunter was named an Anishinaabe Achiever of the Treaty #3 Nation for his work in education and the environment. That summer he and his wife, Sandra Indian, led "A Walk To Remember", a 1200-mile sacred journey around Lake Superior "to bring forth community visions of protecting the air, land and water for the Seven Generations yet to come."

Sherry Farrell Racette
Sherry Farrell Racette has been active in the community for over fifteen years as a cross-cultural educator and teacher of Native studies and art. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba in 1974, and a Masters of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Regina in 1988. She has held positions as curriculum consultant for Saskatchewan Education and sessional instructor at the University of Regina. She also serves as Chairperson of the Saskatchewan Native Economic Development Corporation Board of Trustees, and Trustee of the Regina Public School Board. Farrel Racette presently is a faculty member of the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program at the Gabriel Dumont Institute.

Farrell Racette's commissions include paintings for a number of posters and publications. Among these are The Flower Beadwork People: People Place and Stories of the Métis, published by Saskatchewan Education (1986), and The Flower Beadwork People published by the Gabriel Dumont Institute (1992). Selected exhibitions of her work include solo exhibitions, Call of the Clan Mothers at the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society (Regina, 1991) and The Flower Beadwork People at the Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina, 1992). In 1990 she was co-recipient of a Canada Council Explorations Grant to research the traditional arts of the Métis.

Louise Bernice Halfe
Louise Bernice Halfe's Cree name is Sky Dancer. She was born to Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta in 1953. At the age of seven, she was sent away to the Blue Quills Residential School in St. Paul, Alberta. She left home of her own accord when she was sixteen, breaking ties with her family and completing her studies at St. Paul's Regional high school. It was at this time that she began writing a journal about her experiences.

Halfe made her debut as a poet in Writing the Circle: Native Women of Western Canada, the acclaimed anthology of life writings by Native women. In 1993, she was awarded third prize in the League of Canadian Poets' national poetry contest. She has a Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Regina and certificates in addictions counselling from the Nechi Institute. Halfe lives in Saskatoon with the husband and two children.

Duncan Mercredi
Duncan Mercredi is a Cree from Misipawisik (Grand Rapids), Manitoba. He explores avenues of hope, adventure and explores the truth in reality with poetry and short stories. Mercredi's poetry and short stories have been published in a number of magazines and anthologies. He is Co-Chair of the Aboriginal Arts Group Inc., and resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Duncan's poetry is a celebration of life, rich with his peoples' strong sense of attachment to land, but he also shows results of detachment and displacement in poems of despair and loss of hope in his first book, Spirit of the Wolf. Personal observations are used to explore the harsh realities facing his people today in his second book, Dreams of the Wolf in the City. In his third book his poetry continues to reflect on the experience of becoming "citified." The poem deals with both the loss and the preservation of traditional ways in the urban environment. Duncan states, "Everything we are can be found in the stories that are this land, whether it is found in the back alleys of the city, on the northen roads, or on the back trails of this country."

Jerry Saddleback
Jerry Saddleback, a Cree from Hobbemma, Alberta, graduated from the University of Calgary in 1982 with a B.Ed. Degree. His professional expertise ranges from being a Cree Language Teacher, Cultural Instructor, Program Developer, School Counselor, Curriculum and Development Director and currently teaches at Maskwacis Cultural College in Hobbemma. He is also credited for establishing the University Liberal Arts Program for the Hobbemma community. His lifetime interest is Plains Cree Cultural Research, and he is a lifelong powwow practitioner.

Marie Anneharte Baker
Marie Anneharte Baker, born 1942, just released her new book of poems this year entitled Exercises in Lip Pointing, with New Star Books, 2003. She has written, An Old Indian Trick is to Laugh, Coyote Trail and numerous other collections. In 1990, Marie Baker was one of sixteen women who filmed 110 minutes of what was on their minds and in their hearts. These sixteen films marked the cutting edge of feminist filmmaking, and mapped the terrain for the next wave of Canadian feminism. In Being on the Moon with Polestar Press, 1990, Marie celebrates and condemns the life of contemporary urban Native people. Her poems are powerful and articulate, humorous and emotionally fierce. Being on the Moon is a testament to survival.

Maria Campbell
Maria Campbell was born in April 1940 in Park Valley, Saskatchewan. She was the eldest daughter of seven children born to parents of Scottish, Indian, and French descent. Campbell is best known for her autobiography, Halfbreed, which relates her struggles as a Métis woman in Canadian Society.

Campbell has received many awards for her writing, including the degree Honorary Doctorate in Letters from both York University and Athabasca University, as well as an Honorary Doctorate in Laws from the University of Regina. The Métis nation also honoured Campbell for her community work, especially with woman and children, with the Gabriel Dumont Medal for Merit. Through 2000-2001, Campbell was the Stanley Knowles Distinguished Visiting Professor at Brandon University.

Francis and Juliette McAdam
Francis and Juliette from Big River First Nation have travelled to numerous communities across Canada counselling and teaching through stories. In their travels they have cultivated a knowledge of the deep connections between indigenous peoples - Naskapi, Cree, Ojibway, Innu, Inuit - all linked through story. They will share this knowledge and stories of their grandparents including tales of Wesakechak.

Francis Bird
Francis Bird (Sauleaux) was born and raised in Reserve Junction, a sawmill town near Hudson Bay. He was raised by his maternal grandparents but had the benefit of being close to his father's parents as well. His mother's people were from Cote Reserve and his father's, Yellowquill. A single parent, Francis raised his eight children on his own. He has had his sobriety since 1982 and today works on the Cote First Nation as an addictions counsellor. He is a well-respected storyteller with a wealth of stories including his own thoughts on single parenting and Native banishment.

Francis Nepinak
Francis Nepinak "North Star" is from Pine Creek First Nations, Camperville, Manitoba. He is 62 years old, born on the land, March 28, 1941. He is a Residential School survivor and his main interest is in traditional teachings, history and treaties. He speaks three languages, and is a pipe carrier who runs his own sweat.

Dennis Omeasoo
Dennis Omeasoo is a member of the Grass Dance Society and has promoted the art of dancing for the past 20 years. He was born in Hobbema, Alberta in August 1955. He had the good fortune to be given an old-style Grass dance outfit from a well-respected old-style Grass dancer, the late Henry Ironchild. It was relatives and various Elders who inspired him to understand the philosophy of dancing. Dennis has been immersed in the love and appreciation of First Peoples dancing. With the guidance of his mentor, Buffalo Child, he began to strive for knowledge and understanding of Grass dance and to pass that appreciation to others. He has two decades in traditional and competition dancing. It is his desire to actively apply and expand his background into furthering appreciation and promotion of First Nations Peoples and their cultural identity. He intends to raise his four sons, daughter and two grandchildren with an understanding of all First Nations cultures. Dennis is currently in his second year at Saskatchewan Indian Federated College taking Indian Communication Arts.

Bob Boyer
Métis artist, Bob Boyer was born near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. In 1971 he graduated from the University of Regina with a Bachelor of Education degree in Art Education. Boyer has worked in a variety of media and is probably best known for his "Blanket Statements" in which he uses blankets as a painting surface. In his work Boyer combines traditional design patterns of the Plains Cree people with elements inspired by more contemporary painting. Currently residing in Regina, Boyer has been a Professor and Department Head of Indian Art at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College at the University of Regina since 1981.

Garry Robson
Garry Robson, an Ojibiway from the Peguis First Nation, is the Aboriginal Awareness Consultant with the Aboriginal Education Directorate for the past 20 years. A member of the Turtle Clan, Garry provides traditional culture and historical overview, as it relates to present day, to classrooms, teachers, administrators, parents, community agencies and government departments within the province of Manitoba.

Angelina Waskewich
Angelina Waskewich (née Jimmy) was born in Turtle Lake, Saskatchewan and raised on Thunderchild where her family is from. She married Fred Waskewich in 1957 and has been living at the Onion Lake First Nation ever since.

Credits:
Artistic Directors: Lynn Acoose and Robin Brass
Image Development for Poster: Anthony Dieter
Program and Ad Design: Rio Saxon Design Inc.
Sound Technician: Cary Ciesielski from Twisted Pair Sound
Audio Recording: Protrax Digital
Video Documentation: Elwood Jimmy