Storytelling

 My class is doing a unit on folk tales, primarily trickster tales. I felt certain that someone in the village must be a storyteller or keeper of the local oral history. I asked around during the Slaavix and was told about a man who was the best storyteller. I called him last week to see if he was willing to visit the school and tell some of his stories. I told him he could have as long as he wanted, up to an hour and a half. I also asked if he wanted all the students or just the older ones. He is a brave man; he opted to have all the students in the audience. Of course, he's the grandfather of 5 of our 12 students!

The storyteller asked for a board on which to draw, so my students got him a portable white board, marker, and eraser. He sketched out a map of the south bay of a nearby island. Then he settled in to tell stories about things that had happened in and around that bay. I had expected to hear stories about mythology, like where the Aleut people came from or how the world was created. Instead, we heard more personal stories about people that he had known.

Some of his stories were from the time when all men were warriors because there were four different groups of Aleuts living on Atka. Some of his stories were from when people who are now known as "Old Man" were teens. Many of his stories mentioned religion, but the Orthodox religion rather than the religion of the Aleut ancestors. All of his stories were interesting to hear. Just imagine a group of students from age 5 to 16 sitting (relatively) still and (mostly) quiet for an hour and a half!  My favorite story was about how his grandmother got her nickname, chiiguyaaka, which means song sparrow.

When she was a young girl, the storyteller's future grandmother went with her family to the summer fish camp on the neighboring island. While she was there, a song sparrow told her that a bad wind was coming and that the people needed to go away. She told the people what the bird had said to her. Some of the people, especially some of the elders, didn't believe that a bird had given her a message because she was only a child, so they ignored her. Most of the people thought that it was a message from God, though, so they traveled to the two nearby camps, which were an hour and two hours away respectively.

Overnight, the wind started to blow. It was a harsh wind. After it ended the next day, the people returned to the fish camp, but it was gone. It was buried under about 12 feet of sand! The people wondered if they should dig down to rescue the ones who had stayed behind, but one of the elders, one who had believed the message, said that the people who stayed behind were dead, and the fish camp was now a burial ground. To this day, there is no fish camp in that spot.

During the last quarter of this school year, after spring break, my students will be working on writing memoirs. The theme of the project is that everyone has a story to tell. I've already asked the storyteller if he will return and tell more stories. I hope that my students will be inspired to tell their own stories.