EAU CLAIRE— The Chippewa Valley Museum is hosting an event highlighting the storytelling traditions of various cultures at the Wisconsin Logging Museum on Saturday, January 25. The event will include Ojibwe, Hmong and Scandinavian presenters to discuss the role and elements of storytelling in their cultures.
Diana Peterson, the editor, program coordinator and assistant curator at Chippewa Valley Museum, said the inspiration for this event came from trying to find ways to embrace the winter. While researching the ways different cultures do so, Peterson learned that for the Ojibwe the winter is a time of storytelling. In fact, some stories can only be told when snow is on the ground. Peterson got the idea to use this tradition as the inspiration for an event.
Right away, Peterson knew she had to contact Michael “Laughing Fox” Charette, an Ojibwe storyteller she had seen perform at a state writing retreat. Charette is a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa who weaves together flute playing, history and storytelling to educate audiences across the country about Ojibwe culture. Chippewa and Ojibwe are both names for the Anishinaabe people whose homelands include much of the Great Lakes area.
Charette encountered the Ojibwe tradition of storytelling from a young age, first from his grandmother and eventually from an Ojibwe language teacher who taught him from kindergarten through high school. The stories they told, which often contained important lessons about compassion and morality, had been passed down for generations, so long ago it’s unclear how far they go back, Charette said.
“These stories have been passed on from generation to generation and we don’t even know how far back they go,” Charette said. “They’re tried and tested spiritual tools on how we handle and deal with today’s stresses.”
Charette also incorporates traditional flute music into his presentations. He began playing the flute over two decades ago, and soon realized the power of the instrument. He would play the flute on street corners in town, and have people come over to tell him how much the music had improved their day and began asking questions about the flute and its role in Ojibwe culture.
He combines his flute music and these stories with important history, like the fact that Native American languages and religions were outlawed until just 1978, to teach audiences about Ojibwe and Indigenous cultures.
Peterson also invited Yia Lor, a Hmong-American storyteller who has worked with the museum before, to speak at the event. Lor’s parents are immigrants who taught her about her Hmong roots and culture through storytelling and poetry.
“What really inspired me was listening to my mom share stories of Hmong folklore and really wanting to bring that into the world because with my parents there’s a language and culture barrier,” Lor said. “I started doing more storytelling and writing as almost a love letter to my parents.
She is planning to share a presentation called “Meals My Mother Made” which examines her relationship with both Hmong and American culture and her struggle to balance the two through the lens of food. It’s also a story about her relationship with her mother, and how her mother helps her maintain a connection with Hmong tradition.
Lor will round out her presentation with a collective poem activity that invites the audience to collectively dive into where they are from and the people and places that have shaped their identity. She hopes this will inspire more people to think about the stories they bring to the table, and highlight that there are more things that unite people than divide them.
Peterson also wanted to include a speaker with knowledge of Scandinavian storytelling, as the museum gets a lot of interest in this subject. Thus, rounding out the panel of speakers is Britte Marsh, an expert on the role of trolls in Scandinavian folklore. Her mom immigrated to the states from Denmark in the 1950s, so Marsh grew up immersed in Danish and Nordic culture. While visiting family in northern Norway, Marsh really became interested in trolls because some of her relatives claimed to have encountered the creatures.
She decided to approach these stories from a place of curiosity rather than incredulity and really dug into the role of trolls. For example, one of her relatives claimed to encounter a huldra, which is a type of troll that shapeshifts into a beautiful woman and tries to convince men to marry her. Once married, she tells her husband about her true form and that if he mistreats her beauty will fade and she will revert into a troll.
“This is a story about seduction, about the avoidance of domestic abuse and the power of the religious institution of marriage,” Marsh said. “So when I ask people if they have encountered a troll, the answer then becomes a little murky because those themes can be universally understood in other ways.”
Marsh will dive into the different archetypes of trolls and how historical events, including World Wars I and II, affected these tales. She will also incorporate her family’s own story of immigration into the presentation.
Overall, the event will really dive into stories as a medium to understand the world and accentuate the importance of hearing and valuing stories from many different perspectives and communities.
“I think of stories as a thread that weaves us all together and it doesn’t matter where you come from, we all have stories that live inside us,” Lor said. “The stories that we present and that people see are the stories that hold power, so it’s so important to hear stories, especially stories from underserved communities.”