Festival theme:

Honoring the Salmon and Animals So They Will Return

Friday – Sunday October 26-28, 2012
at

Portland State University’s
Native American Student and Community Center (Friday)
and Hoffmann Hall (Saturday)

Special thanks to our sponsors: Northwest Indian Storytellers Association, PSU’s Indigenous Nations Studies Program and Native American Student and Community Center, National Endowment for the Arts, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Northwest Indian College’s Nez Perce Cooperative Extension Site, and Wisdom of the Elders, Inc.

Dear friends and relatives,

Welcome to our Seventh Annual Northwest Indian Storytelling Festival! The Advisory Council members of the Northwest Indian Storytellers Association (NISA) are excited to acknowledge the valuable role of our Northwest at this year’s festival. Our theme is: Honoring The Salmon and Animals So They Will Return.

We are thrilled that eight very special master storytellers from the Pacific Northwest are joining us this weekend. Elaine Grinnell, Esther Stutzman, Ed Edmo, Darlene Foster, Johnny Moses, Gene Tagaban, Raven Heavy Runner, Roger Fernandes will all be sharing the old way of life with us. Cornel Pewewardy, Woodrow Morrison, Max Defender, Toby Joseph and myself will share the podium as we open with prayers songs and introduce presenters to you.

A group of NISA master tribal storytellers are also apprenticing emerging tribal tellers through the winter, sharing their wisdom, knowledge and stories. Since producing the Discovering Our Story Project, we realize that learning and sharing our stories strengthens cultural identity and self esteem, and brings fulfillment and happiness into our lives. We invite you – our family – to also learn your personal history, your tribal/cultural history, and your traditional stories!

Thank you again for joining us! We’re happy that you wanted to attend this weekend of song, story and healing with us. No matter what your color, creed or identity, we welcome you to make it a tradition to enjoy storytelling traditions with us every winter at our annual Northwest Indian Storytelling Festivals. Our next festival is on October 18-20, 2013 so mark your calendars!

Dogidinh (“thank you” in Deg Hit’an Dine)

Rose High Bear

Rose High Bear, Executive Producer

Wisdom of the Elders, Inc.

The Seventh Annual Northwest Indian Storytelling Festival

Program for Friday, October 26, 2012 – 7:30 – 10:00 PM

7:30 PM                  Welcome audience to Festival
7:35 PM                  Dr. Cornel Pewewardy plays opening song and offers prayer
7:40 PM                  Introduce NW Indian Storytellers Association Advisory Council and Wisdom Board
7:50 PM Teller #1:   Darlene Foster (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Indians)
8:10 PM                  Toby Joseph and Rose High Bear introduce Wisdom, its projects, and Friends of Wisdom
8:15 PM                  Toby and Rose introduces Teller #2 Roger Fernandes (Lower Elwah S’Klallam)
8:20 PM Teller #2: Roger Fernandes (Lower Elwah S’Klallam)
8:45 PM Teller #3: Elaine Grinnell (Jamestown S’Klallam)
9:05 PM                  Short auction break; audience survey distributed
9:20 PM Teller #4: Ed Edmo (Shoshone Bannock, Yakama, Nez Perce)
9:40 PM                  Announce auction winners
9:45 PM                  Close with a prayer and a song. Close hall at 10:00.

NISA Emerging Tribal Storytellers Workshop

Saturday, 27 October 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM

PSU’s Native American Student and Community Center

The NISA Emerging Tribal Storytellers Workshop is open to NISA members only
(enrolled tribal members and those who self identify as Native American)
The agenda will be available on Friday evening or Saturday morning at NISA registration table.

Saturday, 27 October 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
PSU Hoffmann Hall

7:00 PM Max Defender Drum Group opens event
7:15 PM                  Woodrow Morrison and Rose High Bear welcome audience to Festival
7:20 PM Invocation by Max Defender
7:25 PM Woodrow Morrison introduces festival theme: Honoring the Salmon and Animals So They Will Return
7:30 PM                  Introduce NISA Advisory Council and Wisdom Board
7:40 PM Teller #1: Esther Stutzman (Komemma Kalapuya and Coos)
8:00 PM Rose and Toby introduce the importance of Discovering Our Story Project
8:05 PM Mary Elaine Priester introduces Wisdom’s Light A Fire Award and Friends of Wisdom
8:15 PM Teller #3: Gene Tagaban (Tlingit)
8:40 PM Teller #2: Raven Heavy Runner (Blackfoot)
9:00 PM                  Short break; audience survey distributed
9:20 PM Johnny Moses (Tulalip)
9:40 PM                  Announce auction winners
9:45 PM                  Close with a prayer and song. Close hall at 10:00 PM

Emerging Storytellers Matinee

Sunday, 16 October 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM

PSU’s Native American Student and Community Center

12:00 Noon Shannon Stutzman with Splac’ta Alla (People of the Valley) sings opening song
12:05 PM                  Invocation by an elder
12:10 PM                  Wisdom Advisory Council welcomes audience and makes announcements
12:20 PM                  Introduce first group of emerging tellers
12:25 PM                  Each of first four apprenticeship recipients give 5 minute presentations
12:45 PM                  Announcements
12:50 PM                  Introduce second group of emerging tellers
12:55 PM                  Second group of four apprenticeship recipients give 5 minute presentations
1:15 PM Announcements
1:20 PM Introduce third group of emerging tellers
1:25 PM Third group of four apprenticeship recipients give 5 minute presentations
1:45 PM Acknowledge Friends of WISDOM; invite audience to become members
1:50 PM Short break; pass out audience surveys
2:05 PM Introduce fourth group of emerging tellers
2:10 PM Fourth group of four apprenticeship recipients give 5 minute presentations
2:30 PM End silent auction; thanks to sponsors, tellers, emerging tellers, audience
2:40 PM Closing song and prayer to wrap up festival weekend
2:45 PM Event closes. Close Hall at 3:00 PM

Wisdom of the Elders 2026 Summer Newsletter

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Greetings, Friends of Wisdom,

The summer season has a way of moving fast, and this season has been no exception. Between fieldwork, new partnerships, and the everyday work of listening and preserving, our community showed up for each other and for the land we share.

We're grateful for every hand that helped make this season count, and we're glad to share a bit of it with you here.

Our Wisdom of the Elders archive continues to grow, with new conversations from our tape collection making their way online – elders speaking in their own words, no interruptions, no filters. There is something about hearing a story the way it was actually told, at the pace it was actually told, that no summary has ever managed to hold.

We've also been out in the field this summer with our Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) crew, capturing the land stewardship and ecological knowledge work that grounds so much of what we do.

We spent time with Stephanie Craig, a 7th-generation Kalapuya weaver and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, documenting her basket-weaving practice for an upcoming series, Seven Generations of Knowledge, carried in a pair of hands.

Watch The Featured Video

It Takes Many Hands

We're also proud to be part of the BRANCH Coalition, a group of organizations working together on invasive species removal, native plant restoration, watershed stewardship, and care of urban green spaces across the Portland area.

Our partners in this work include Portland Parks, Urban Forestry Project, Connecting Canopies, The Blueprint Foundation, Depave, Friends of Trees, Verde PDX, Columbia Slough, POIC, APANO, BPI PDX, and the City of Gresham. It takes many hands to care for this land well, and we're grateful to do so alongside organizations that share the same commitment.

Multimedia: Putting 30+ years of Archival footage on the Map

Behind the scenes, we're preparing our full video library for a larger public home so more people can access this work. Our web team is also building out a major piece of our Digital Archive Initiative: an interactive online story map that will let visitors explore our archive by place, connecting oral histories, video, photographs, and traditional ecological knowledge directly to the land they come from.

The stories will no longer live in a list. They will live where they happened so that someone can open the map, find a place they know, and hear an Elder speak about it. It's one of the more ambitious projects we've taken on, and we can't wait to bring it online.

Board of Directors and our Wisdom Radio Program

We're also working closely with our Board of Directors on a full relaunch of our Radio Program, with plans to bring it to every major platform, making it easier than ever to listen wherever you are. Stay tuned; this one's been a long time coming, and we're excited to share more soon.

Fall 2026 Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge Internship Enrollment is Now Open!

We're excited to announce that enrollment is officially open for our Fall 2026 ITEK Internship, and we can't wait to welcome our next cohort! We're accepting applications from anyone passionate about Environmental Conservation & Restoration and how Wisdom integrates Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) into our work.

This paid 12-week program combines hands-on fieldwork with partner organizations, along with in-person and online sessions covering ITEK, STEAM-related concepts, and Native American cultural arts and plant knowledge. Interns earn $19.00 an hour. It's a hands-on, heart-forward opportunity to build real skills while deepening your connection to land and community.

Spots are limited, so don't wait!

Questions are always welcome. Contact

dawn@wisdomoftheelders.org and carmelina@wisdomoftheelders.org

We can't wait to see who joins us this Fall!

ITEK VIDEO

Save the Date

Wieden+Kennedy: Dec 5, 2026

Seeds of Wisdom Event

There's one more thing we've been building toward, and we're glad to finally share it.

Later this year, we'll gather in person for Seeds of Wisdom, our end-of-year fundraiser, hosted at Wieden+Kennedy here in Portland. Wisdom of the Elders is creating an event centered on Indigenous storytelling, environmental stewardship, and workforce development the same three threads that run through everything you've just read. It felt right to bring them into one room.

We're looking for partners who want to support meaningful community impact while helping amplify Native voices and leadership in Portland and beyond. If that sounds like you, or like an organization you're part of, we would love to hear from you. We're building our partner roster now, which means there's still real room to help shape what this evening becomes.

***As a note for those who have supported us through Willamette Week's Give!Guide in past years, we're not part of Give!Guide this season.

We've Joined Earth Gives

Earth Gives is a nationwide platform connecting donors with organizations advancing solutions for people and the planet.

It is a natural fit for us: our work has always lived where cultural preservation and ecological stewardship meet the archive and the watershed, the storyteller and the seed, and Earth Gives puts that work in front of people across the country who care about both.

Our end-of-year giving runs through Seeds of Wisdom and Earth Gives and we hope you'll join us there instead.

If you've been looking for a simple way to support what you've read about here, this is it.

Want to stay closer to what we're up to day-to-day? Find us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube; more is coming there soon, including TikTok and Threads.

There's more coming this fall. Thank you for being part of it.

Wisdom of the Elders, Inc.

Portland, Oregon

wisdomoftheelders.org

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