Smoked Fish, Bannock & Indian Tea

Performance Storytelling

By Richard Wagamese

What It Is:

A 90-minute mix of theater, and humour coupled with traditional and contemporary storytelling that details why storytelling is so vital to the health and well being of our communities, homes, organizations and schools.

What It Accomplishes:

We've lost the ability to really talk to each other. The technological world we live in now makes communication faster at the same time that it decreases our communication skills. We text and email each other in short bursts. We talk on cell phones while engaged in other activities. We tweet in 140 characters or less. When we are together we disappear into television or video games.

Storytelling, the act of one voice talking, sharing experience, observations, learning and teachings is becoming a lost art. Even though everyone from every culture has an oral tradition, we have ceased to be storytellers and lost touch with our original voice.

Smoked Fish, Bannock & Indian Tea shows how valuable a resource stories are. It shows what a crucial tool storytelling can be. It highlights the value of an ongoing, vibrant storytelling tradition in creating and sustaining healthy, vibrant communities. It shows how storytelling bring us all closer together. More than anything, this performance reminds us of the magic of the sound of one voice talking.

Why It Matters:

When a tradition diminishes or disappears we lost on two counts. We lose the richness of the tradition itself in our lives and we lose the spiritual, ethical and cultural underpinnings of that tradition. With a shrunken capacity for storytelling we lose these crucial skills:

Listening: The ability to focus on a message and concentrate on what is being told to us.

Hearing: The ability to form an emotional reaction to both words that are spoken and to the speaker.

Integrating:  The ability to frame a story within our own experience and to discern personal meaning from it.

Sharing: The ability to personalize a story and offer it to others with our own emotional and spiritual interpretation in the telling.

In short, we lose the ability to make ourselves known to each other. We lose crucial community, family, home, team and nation building abilities. Without story and without storytelling much of who we are is lost, misinterpreted or misrepresented.

Where It's Available:

Smoked Fish, Bannock & Indian Tea is as transportable as a good story. It can be brought to schools, universities, conferences, First Nations communities, community centers, churches, and theaters. Though it's Aboriginal in context its themes and its message are universal - perfect for audiences everywhere that want to remember the magic of a good story well told.

Where it's Been:
 

First Nations, Metis, Inuit Education Conference - Calgary 2009

Thompson Rivers University - Kamloops 2009

Cottonwood Manor - Kamloops 2009

First Nations Education Steering Committee Annual Conference - Vancouver 2009

Sechelt Indian Band - Sechelt BC 2009

Beausoleil First Nation - Christian Island ON 2009

Rates:

Performance fee plus travel and accommodations. Contact Richard for the rates for your organization.

Email: richardwagamese@yahoo.com

Feedback:
 

"Richard's  presentation and discussion was powerful, emotional and clearly had an impact on all who attended.  We would recommend Richard's services to other post-secondary institutions, conferences, etc"
Karri-Lynn Paul
Aboriginal Education Program (AEP)
Mount Royal College

"Richard Wagamese is a brilliant and talented story teller.  Richard's audience is taken on a journey with him that is at times hysterically funny, heart-wrenchingly sad and startling with insight.  He has a unique ability to make us understand how we all need each other as human beings and how important it is to find our common ground."

Mallory Neuman, Manager, Special Initiatives

Healthy Child Manitoba

"The acknowledged highlight of the 2009 Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts was the annual Bruce Hutchison Memorial Lecture delivered this year by Ojibway novelist, memoirist and journalist Richard Wagamese. His literary and journalistic credentials are well known, but Richard Wagamese has now also revealed himself to be a riveting public speaker."

Jane Davidson, Director

Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts