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Northwest natives preserve storytelling tradition

Event celebrates project to record tales

By Venice Buhain | The Olympian • Published February 23, 2009

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OLYMPIA – Storyteller Cecil Cheeka, whose father was a member of the Makah Nation and whose mother was a member of the Squaxin Island tribe, explained to a crowd at The Evergreen State College that all stories have a purpose — just before he launched into one about how grandmothers and bears could be connected.

"Sometimes they are little bit true. Sometimes they are a little twisted," Cheeka said.

Different types of stories

Cheeka and other prominent native storytellers came to Evergreen's Longhouse Education and Cultural Center on Sunday to pass on both modern and traditional stories.

About 100 people came to the event, which was the celebration of the yearlong project to preserve the work of Northwest native storytellers.

The Native American Stories of Washington project, funded by the National Endowment of the Arts, recorded the stories and recollections of seven storytellers, who spent two to three days each at the Jack Straw Productions recording studio in Seattle.

They were given free rein to tell whatever kind of story they wanted to preserve, said Northwest Heritage Resources executive director Jill Linzee.

Virginia Beavert, a University of Oregon professor and a member of the Yakama Indian Nation, used her time to preserve stories in the Sahaptin language, Linzee said. Delbert Miller of the Skokomish Tribal Nation wanted his stories to be posted to the tribe's Web site as streaming audio.

"They recorded what they wanted to record," Linzee said. The storytellers also retain the rights to their own recordings, she said.

Other artists involved were Curtis DuPuis of the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis, Pauline Hillaire of the Lummi Nation near Bellingham and Harvest Moon of the Quinault Indian Nation near Ocean Shores.

Elaine Grinnell of the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe said that she grew up on the Olympic Peninsula hearing stories from her grandfather. Today she passes along the stories to her nine grandchildren and thousands of other schoolchildren whom she has visited.

"It's a way of life," she said. "You have to sit still and respect the storyteller and be ready to receive that lesson. I learned that at a very early age."

Stories have an educational element, Grinnell said, who brought with her a fable regarding a family of mice, and recounted her first encounter with someone from an Apache tribe in the 1960s.

The longtime storyteller said she has heard others retell her stories in different ways.

"I almost didn't recognize it," she said with a laugh. "But I don't want people to be embarrassed or apologize. You bring your own experiences to telling a story."

Venice Buhain is a reporter for The Olympian. She can be reached at 360-754-5445 or vbuhain@theolympian.com.