Altering the story deprives those who hear it

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Tansi, ahnee and hello. There's a terrific responsibility of being a storyteller. It springs from a storytelling tradition that believes in the empowerment of the people. The empowerment comes when you offer them the choice of how to run their lives and see their world.

Our legends and stories all work like that. They contain, at various levels throughout them, ethical teachings, principles and world-views that allow us to rediscover ourselves each time we revisit them. Indeed, with each revisiting, the story and our understanding of that story becomes stronger, more visceral, personal and empowering.

It follows then, that the very basis of storytelling is honesty. When you re given a story you automatically become responsible for giving that story away at some time to someone who might need it for their own enlightenment and growth. When you do that you also become automatically responsible for re-telling that story as honestly as it was told to you.

Straightforwardly and without color, theatre or bias.

As Native communicators we are the modern continuation of that ancient storytelling tradition. We tell our stories around different fires but we tell them nonetheless. We tell them around the fires of radio transistors and television tubes.

We tell them with the fire of laser printers, computer terminals and satellite beams.

We are the keepers of a proud and culture-sustaining tradition.

We are involved in the passing on or stories as they happen in our communities, politics and universe that directly affect the lives of the people. As such, we are in the business of empowering the people.

When Grand Chief Ovide Mercredi told the Native American Journalists Association conference in Kamloops last month that we weren't doing our jobs right, he was basically telling us that he understood that tradition better than we.

He reminded us that our responsibility to our people was to bring our cultural heritage into the way we constructed our stories. In other words, to color the stories we were given with the bias of our own cultural perspective. What this means in terms of the storytelling tradition, is to not re-tell the stories honestly and ultimately, to dis-empower the people of choice in how they run their lives and see the world.

He stated that we were trying too hard to be like the white media. For me, who's been a longtime member of both, this was more compliment than put-down. Because when you find storytellers with consummate craft, it's best to learn their techniques for you might serve that tradition better yourself. Despite much caterwauling to the contrary by Native groups and individuals through the years, mainstream media is not the culture-bashing ogre it's claimed to be.

They, as we, believe a story needs to be re-told with honesty, straightforwardly and without color, theatre or bias.

For someone who has gone to great lengths to use mainstream media himself for his own political gain and popularity, it seems like the Grand Chief wouldn't really mind at all if we were to become as naive to Native tradition as they sometimes are. Perhaps then he would praise our skills rather than demean them.

This is not a denunciation of Mr. Mercredi. Rather it is meant to be a defense of a group of storytellers who operate under very difficult circumstances. Primarily, our own people are under the belief most times that it is our chief responsibility, pardon the pun, to tell THEIR story rather than THE story. When that happens we cease to follow that ancient tradition and dis-empower those we seek to empower with choice of vision and choice of action.

Mr. Mercredi's comments reflect more than his own bias. They reflect the encompassing difficulties Native communicators encounter daily. That they maintain the tradition rather than acquiesce to culture is testament to their understanding of that tradition.

Anyone who seeks to empower people is destined to encounter difficulty. That's in a story I was tol one time a long time ago. It gets more true each time I re-tell the story to myself, more true and more empowering. Until next time, Meegwetch.