November is National Native American Heritage Month
Stories of the First Nations - PreK-3
This Native American Heritage Month, introduce young ones to the legendary Dovie Thomason. She is an internationally renowned storyteller, known for her ability to take her listeners back to the timeless place that she first visited as a child when listening to traditional Native American stories from her Kiowa Apache and Lakota relatives.
Photo credit Ari Ress
SPI has chosen Dovie’s “Animal Stories” for its collection. The stories come from the Iroquois, Lakota, Seneca, and Oneida Nations. With humor, music, and an array of vocalizations, young listeners are made aware of the Animal People’s weaknesses and virtues - and then they are gently prodded to recognize their own.
Dovie began telling stories publicly while teaching literature and writing at an urban high school in Cleveland to students of widely varied backgrounds, seventeen languages, and “low-literacy performance.” It impressed upon her the importance and relevance of the oral tradition and the stories she’d first heard as a child of Lakota, Apache, and Scot Traveller descent. In the nearly 40 years since then, Dovie has shared stories throughout North America, Europe, South Africa, and New Zealand, on reservations and maraes, at powwows and conferences, and always in schools and libraries.
She has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts as a Master Traditional Teaching Artist and has worked in Arts-in-Education with many state arts councils. Dovie establishes a rapport and bond with listeners of all ages and creates a climate where laughter, learning, and respect come together. Her storytelling transmits her lived experience of Indigenous oral tradition and transforms it for today’s audiences.
Click here to watch a video of Dovie produced by the National Council for the Traditional Arts. She talks about her own richly textured family and offers her reflections on the value of storytelling in transmitting cultural memory, the importance of how to listen, and the role stories can, and do, play in making sense of the world in which we live.
Story Preservation Initiative makes its work available to all, free of charge.
SPI has developed two Learning Lab projects: Our “Storytelling Learning Lab” is appropriate for students in grades Pre-K through 3, and our “Learning Lab” project is suited for students in grades 4-12, with an emphasis on grades 7-12.
Our Vision: Story Preservation Initiative believes in the transformative power of story to connect people around our common humanity and create a better future. We value generosity, diversity, inclusivity, and equity in our stories and in our outreach, exploring and illuminating the deepest levels of human potential.
Our Mission: Story Preservation Initiative is a leading producer and online distributor of original, content-rich stories for K-12 students. Our open-access stories and educational materials are used by educators around the world, engaging the hearts and minds of young people to foster curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking.
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