In a talk celebrating First Nations Awareness Week, which ran February 7 to 11, U of T professor Simon Ortiz led a seminar on Monday, Febraury 7 entitled “Writing and Telling: Stories of Our Land, Culture and Community” at First Nations House. Ortiz shared spoken and written storytelling techniques with an audience consisting of his fourth-year seminar class on Indigenous Thought and Expression, as well as members of the general public. Ortiz teaches both English and Aboriginal Studies at U of T and is the author of a number of children’s books and poems, including The Good Rainbow Road and The People Shall Continue, that are inspired by native storytelling traditions.
“Stories are basically about people and how they live together,” Ortiz explained. He demonstrated the importance of relationships to storytelling through a number of examples in both English and in the West Kereis language of New Mexico.
In a comic tale Ortiz told about the significance of names, a pair of travelers express their appreciation for an elderly man’s hospitality by naming all of their children after him. A more serious story used the example of a songbird to demonstrate that all living creatures have a role in nature.
Ortiz explained that the tales themselves are not the only elements of the native storytelling tradition.
“The ceremony of getting the storyteller to speak…reveals the connection between young people and elders,” Ortiz said. He described his own relationship with his grandfather as an example of the manner in which traditional stories are passed from one generation to another. “All the stories are traditional and have to do with my experiences,” he said.
Speaking to The Varsity after the seminar, Ortiz explained the role of native storytelling in the cultural history of the Americas.
“Literature of indigenous peoples is very significant to cultures of North and South America. It represents the first body of knowledge in the Western Hemisphere.” He said he regards seminars in native storytelling as an opportunity to raise awareness of this body of knowledge. In his published works, Ortiz combines both traditional fables and his own imagination, adding that “imagination is the most important part of inspiration.”
Ortiz encourages students to read the work of other native authors such as Sherman Alexie, Louise Eldrich, and M. Scott Momaday because “they speak to the conditions, circumstances, and social concerns of native people as well as the relationship between natives and non-natives. Their ideas are relevant for everyone.”
