Storytelling Helps Cultures Connect

The journey to reclaim his identity as a Native American began after Ken Jackson became an adult.

His mother was Danish, and he didn't discover his father's family was Anishinabe, from the Ojibwe tribe in eastern Canada, until a visiting cousin passed on the secret.

The path for Jackson, also known as "Grey Eagle," has most recently led to the Eastside, where he is helping Native-American children in Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond find their native voice through storytelling.

Romayne Watt, coordinator of the Eastside Native American Education Consortium, originally asked Jackson to teach storytelling to Eastside Indian children to hone speaking skills and affirm their identity - an identity often not recognized or respected in school lessons or among their classmates.

The consortium was awarded a $3,325 grant for the project - "Keeping Our Heritage Alive: Native American Storytelling Circle; Three Generations" - from the King County Arts Commission motel/hotel tax allotment. A public program is scheduled for 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Puget Sound auditorium, 10608 N.E. Fourth St. in Bellevue.

The storytelling circle has met weekly since March and was so successful that Jackson last week led a dozen students and some parents and grandparents in storytelling assemblies in the students' own Bellevue and Lake Washington schools.

"We prepared them for questions like, `Wow, I didn't know you were an Indian. You don't look like an Indian,' " Watt said. "This lays the groundwork for them to not be embarrassed by those questions but to share their culture."

Jackson, a professor of communications at the University of Washington, plans to leave the UW this month to devote more time to strengthening Native-American culture and identity. He conducts workshops on storytelling and identity for Daybreak Star Indian Center in Seattle, and plans to spend part of the summer in Norway, teaching storytelling workshops for the Sami, a native people also known as Laplanders.

"This helps for others to understand me," said James Abada, 14, a Tlingit Indian from Tillicum Middle School in Bellevue.

At the assembly at Bellevue's Newport Heights Elementary School last week, Jackson explained the significance of the circle to the rest of the school.

"When people gather in a circle, everybody is equal," Jackson said. "There is no head or foot. In our circle, we share experiences and feelings and stories. We are going to open our circle up to you."

The members of the circle passed the talking stick around as they told the story of the "Raven and the Octopus," turning the stick as they passed it so the beads inside resonated like a rattling snake.

Vanity was the raven's downfall, and a drumbeat sounded as each octopus arm wrapped around the high-headed bird. Faces of cream and brown and tan beneath blond ponytails, black curls and honey-brown hair watched and chanted the sayings with the circle members, some of whom were their own classmates.

Circle members agree the generations bring a sense of their roots. Edith Owen attends the circle with her granddaughter, Shawte, 6. Owen was born in Montana of Chippewa and Cree descent, but was put into the Pierre Indian Boarding School in South Dakota from fourth to eighth grade.

Government-run Indian boarding schools shunned Indian heritage and identity, Owen said.

"The circle really has done a lot for me in the short time we've been there," Owen said.

"That circle makes you find your voice."