Activities abound with Aboriginal Storytelling Month
- Jeanelle Mandes | February 17, 2015
February is not only known for its cold winters in Saskatchewan, but it’s also become known for the past 13 years as Aboriginal Storytelling month throughout the province.
Sean Brooks, Branch Manager for Wheatland Region Library, recently hosted a launch event in Rosthern.
“Each year, the Library Services for Saskatchewan Aboriginal People (LSSAP) have hosted a launch and asked Wheatland to do it this year. We decided to go with Rosthern and they jumped at the chance,” says Brooks.
He says The Wheatland Region library was able to partner with the Station Arts Centre in Rosthern as their venue and they had three storytellers that attended the event: Chad Solomon, who does the Rabbit and Bear Paws series of graphic novels and tells his stories with the use of puppets; Leah Dorion from the Prince Albert area, is an interdisciplinary artist and she had also written some well-received children stories; and the Master of Ceremonies was Howard Walker, who is well-known for MC’ing traditional events such as powwows and round dances in Saskatchewan.
Brooks says they had about 135 people of all ages that attended the event at the Station Arts including Victoria Jurgens MLA for Prince Albert-Northcote brought greetings from the Province and Jeremy Morgan brought greetings from the Saskatchewan Arts Board who were both are sponsors of the month for the event.
Wendy Sinclair, former chair of LSSAP and now a committee member, says back in 2001 the Provincial government created a task force to look at why First Nations and Métis People were not using public libraries. After hearing what people had to say after visiting six sites throughout the province, they came up with 46 recommendations. One of them was to create an annual event for storytelling so the LSSAP took on that initiative to host such an event throughout the province.
Sinclair says it’s their 13th year of hosting it and it just gets bigger and bigger and they wanted to celebrate First Nations and Métis oral traditions.
“We picked the month of February because when certain stories are passed on in the First Nations culture, snow must be on the ground. So in Saskatchewan, you’re almost guaranteed to have snow on the ground in February,” says Sinclair.
The LSSAP committee goes out to seek grants and then they give money to libraries, organizations, and to people who want to be involved in Aboriginal Storytelling.
“It’s wonderful. Last year we had close to 18 thousand people involved at 35 sites throughout the province,” says Sinclair.
Sinclair says the event creates partnerships between libraries, schools, and different organizations and every community is different with their storytelling. A list of all the Aboriginal storytelling events in Saskatchewan can be found on the LSSAP website.
Related stories:
- Library celebrates Aboriginal Storytelling Month
- Aboriginal Storytelling Month: Rabbit and Bear Paws
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