Part 2: Living Legends Community Art First Nations Carving Workshop Cowichan

What you achieved last night, for me that was different, was that I felt like I was in community. I was in a Native event, even though it was all about Natives and it was held at the Native Cultural Centre. You yourself, you're not Native, right? No. So, from you, I would expect something that was very professional, very straightforward and you know, it was followed a linear line, but in Native community, there is no linear line to follow because it's like oral tradition based. It's all about community and every person has their place and they know what they're supposed to do and everybody knows what that person is supposed to do. So when an event happens, you look to each other and everybody knows when they're supposed to go and what they're supposed to do, so they do it. It just doesn't follow a linear line, it's more organic. For me, that moment was shown when the Elder got up and felt comfortable enough in a non-Native event to be able to bring forward his Native teachings just like that without even thinking about it because there have been events where Elders have gone and they'll be sitting back and if I happen to be near them, they'll be saying, oh they should be, they'll tell someone else and then someone else will go to the director or whoever's in charge, find them and say, this is what should have been done or whatever or this is what we should be doing now and they'll either do it or they'll get up and apologize and say, oh I didn't know. But no, the Elder himself got up and said, excuse me, this is how it's, because this incident has happened, one of the dancers lost a piece of his regalia, I have to get up and say something about this and this is why and he just didn't even think about it, he felt at home and I was, that's when the whole thing changed for me, I felt very at peace and I thought, okay, this is the moment I've been waiting for as a Native person who's been living in an urban society for 20 years, I've been waiting for that crossover of the culture and I felt that's what happened last night and it was very touching because there were a lot of non-Natives in the audience and I could see they were all, the whole feeling for them changed as well at that moment because they could see the seriousness of the culture, you know, most people don't see that and to know that the first half of the event was all about what you might call protocol, it's actually just the way we do things, you know, you have to do things in a respectful manner and that was done. I came late so I'm just starting my carving so I think I'll have to come for the rest of the Saturdays. I think I'm bit off a bit more than I can chew but I was determined to do a frog because we live out in the forest and when I see them hopping across the road in my headlights in the fall, I know that it's the start of a very spiritual time and then when I see them going the other way in the springtime or I hear them, I know that people have gone through a time of prayer and meditation and summer's coming so I'm really fond of frogs so that was what I decided that I had to do. My name is Roley Holland, I live in Ladysmith and I've been on Vancouver Island for six years now, originally from Calgary and today I have some experience as a carver but I enjoyed it, I learned a lot. Wonderful day, wonderful day. Actually I heard about it by word of mouth, I did not see it in the paper although I understand it was in the paper and I phoned and actually I dropped by here a couple weeks ago too and picked up a little blurb on it and just decided to try to participate. Well I think there should be, I think it was a great, for me it was a great experience, I think there should be more intercultural exchange opportunities. I have not done a lot of this kind of thing before and I think if you want to have a well-functioning, I mean we're obviously a multicultural society all the way across Canada and with the immigrant populations we have and the indigenous populations, we need to be a totally functioning society and how else can you do it except to share experiences, makes sense to me. I found it to be very pleasant, I like working with wood, just kind of brings me to a completely different place and kind of makes me forget about like everything that's going on in life. To start out it was like I didn't really know what to do and then it just all kind of fell into place and started looking better the more I worked on it. Near the end of the day when I started getting the paint on there, that's when it finally started taking shape for me, I could actually tell it's a bear after I put the paint on it. I'm Garth Schmallenberg and I live here in the Cowichan Valley, a fairly new arrival from Ontario and I'm the executive director for Partners for Prosperity and a coordinator for the Arts for Development Foundation. I think that that arts is really an essential part of building culture, it's important for building society, it's important for the development of a human being as a whole and I think it's an essential piece and it's a lot of fun besides all of that. So we get to learn about arts that we didn't know about before and get to participate in cultural activities that we are maybe not as familiar with and so it's wonderful. I really have enjoyed this activity and many others here that are intercultural. Only this afternoon at lunch I was able to participate in the storytelling and also at the opening of the festival. I don't remember the gentleman's last name, Richard. He was a fabulous storyteller and we laughed so hard and I would really encourage others if they get the opportunity to listen to those kinds of stories. It's an amazing art and very educational at the same time and one of the things I noticed is that many of the native stories are they have a theme and a moral to them that always help in some way. It's a wonderful way to relax and concentrate and really focus on something and then you get a nice, hopefully a nice result at the end of it but whatever the result is it's nice anyway. So yeah, I enjoyed it immensely. I really liked it and will probably follow it up by getting myself at least a carving knife. I don't know if I'll go as deep into it as becoming an expert carver. There's a killer whale design here. The killer whale represents long and full life. Not so much in years but how you live those years. Living life to its fullest at every possible moment like you're doing today. Living life to its fullest. You're trying something new, experimenting, enjoying. With the killer whale when you see them out in the water usually they're not alone. They're in their families. They have often their children with them. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles in families of 15 to 90, 15 to 100. And they all look after each other. They all help each other, feed each other. The killer whale long and full life. Like my brother was talking about the salmon earlier. There's a little salmon design here that you can put on here too. He represents survival, continuity, fertility of the mind, body, and spirit. Because our people they depend upon the continuity and fertility of the salmon for their survival and still do that sometimes. But it's much harder to get fish. The amount of fish one needs for a family to survive now year-round. It's harder to get it from the rivers like they used to because they don't, they aren't coming back to the rivers. Maybe they're going somewhere else because they don't like the taste and the smell of the river. That's how they find their home. They taste it, they smell it, they remember that. And when they get back to it, when they get to the moment, oh there's home. So maybe they're not liking the taste of the smell of the river anymore. But that's the salmon. There's another little design here called the frog. Wachas is often used for frog. Wachas, say wachas. That little, little sounds like when you're clearing your throat a little bit. Or a rough beach. Wachas, wachas the frog. This is wachas the frog. He represents new beginnings, springtime. When you, that's when you hear, that's when the frog will come out at the beginning of spring, right? You hear him coming out, coming out of his mud home that he's been in all winter. Come out, he'll be singing, coming out singing to the world. Spall the raven, spall the raven, that's one of the easier ones to say, spall the raven. Swatsali, swatsali, the hummingbird, swatsali. And there's spa'at the bear, spa'at the bear, spa'at the bear. And stikeya, stikeya, the wolf, stikeya. My name is Sally Hart. I'm an elementary school teacher, presently at Alexander School. I've been to one storytelling session at, so, no, that's not right. I've been to two storytelling sessions. The first one at the opening when we had Richard come. And then the second one in the theatre. And that was with some of our Penelakut elders. My granny was from, my late granny. So that was really nice for me to be able to attend that. The interesting thing about hearing the different storytellers is there are so many wonderful versions of the same legends. To have this wealth of storytellers come, three and four and five different other versions, to enrich the total legend experience is just a beautiful experience for me. My father is First Nations. My mother was non-First Nations. And so I kind of am on this circus ride of one foot on one colour horse and another foot on another colour horse. And I'm riding along on this cultural circus ride and realising that there are two entirely different mindsets between our First Nations culture and our non-First Nations culture. The mindset is, so the life set is so different. An event like this is a good opportunity to start the dialogue, to get people from all walks of the community and all backgrounds talking and walking together with some sort of vision of enlarging that dialogue and promoting understanding, more acceptance, more understanding. And you know, acceptance of the fact that even though you do not understand, but having that ability to accept that you don't understand and that's okay. So again, it's not a matter of, I'm going to learn everything I can about my neighbour and then everything's going to be fine, because that's not going to happen. You're never going to learn anything about everything about your neighbour, but you can learn something about yourself and become a more open person and bridge some of those gaps that we have.