For Educators

ON BECOMING STORY-READY

The next two videos provide introductory information about Indigenous stories, their structure or framework, and protocols for using these stories. The videos pose considerations and guiding questions to get educators ready to work with Indigenous stories and Indigenous storytellers. These videos can help you become familiar with a story-place by spending time within it. A question to keep in mind is, What do I need to do first to get story-ready?

On Indigenous Stories and Their Framework (4:39 min)
I identify structures of Indigenous stories, considerations for using stories for teaching and learning, and suggestions for getting ready to listen and learn from stories.

On Including Indigenous Stories (5:39 min)
I outline questions that could help educators prepare to work with Indigenous stories and discuss some basic protocols for using Indigenous stories.

There are many benefits regarding Indigenous storytelling such as sustaining culture and cultural teachings and principles, and for guiding all aspects of life. Intimately connected to the action of storytelling are ways to make meaning from and with Indigenous traditional and lived experience stories. This last video focuses on ways to work with Indigenous stories using a framework called, Indigenous Storywork, which includes the seven principles of respect, responsibility, reverence, reciprocity, holism, inter-relatedness, and synergy.

Dr. Jo-ann Archibald- On Indigenous Storytelling (41:54 min)
In Part One, I share my perspectives about the Indigenous storywork principles of respect, responsibility, reverence, and reciprocity, which facilitate a process of getting story-ready to work with Indigenous traditional and life-experience stories. In Part Two, I apply the other Indigenous storywork principles of holism, inter-relatedness, and synergy to a Stó:lō story of “Mr. Magpie and Mr. Crow” told by Stó:lō Elders Harry Edwards and Agnes Kelly. Questions to consider: Do you have an understanding of this story that is different from mine? Could you use Indigenous storywork in your teaching practice? If so, how?