Lake Country Art Gallery
ONLINE RESOURCES:
  • Home
  • About
    • Hours & Contact Info
    • Mandate
    • Our Team >
      • Call for Directors
      • WE'RE HIRING - 2022
    • Volunteer
  • Exhibitions
    • Coming Soon
    • Show your art >
      • 2022 CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS
      • Apply to Curator for Exhibition
    • Exhibition Photo Gallery >
      • Mural Wall
      • Town Wall
      • Art Alley
      • Pop-up Gallery
  • EVENTS
    • Existential Café
    • ArtShelf Bookshop & Reading Room
  • ART HOUSE
    • Workshops/ Calendar
    • Resources
    • Artist Studios
  • Support
    • Membership & Donations
  • Art Words
    • Exhibition Catalogues

Fire, Folklore and Family Day by Angelika Offenwanger

6/29/2018

15 Comments

 
Picture
The campfire light flickered over the floor as we sat around the circle, sipping hot chocolate, enthralled by the rise and fall of the storyteller’s voice.
“Coyote laughed at Crab. ‘Of course I will race you! How can you win, if you can only run backwards?'”
I had never heard these stories before, which is why I went to today’s Family Day event at the local art gallery – the promise of a First Nations storyteller giving Okanagan legends was too good to pass up. The “campfire” is an art installation comprised of rock, charcoal, and clear sheet plastic, with a projection of a digital fire on it. The effect is mesmerizing, real and not-real at the same time, the reflections dancing over the walls and the floor of the room reminiscent of both an actual fire and the play of light at the bottom of the lake on a summer’s day.
There were stories of “How Coyote Got His Name”, of “Coyote’s Race”, of “The Boy Who Grew Up With Grizzly Bears”. The one that most tickled my fancy was “Coyote’s Race”. I can’t give it to you in the words of the original storyteller, the way First Nations stories are meant to be told. But when I asked today’s re-teller*, David Florence, if I might share a piece of it here, he thought it could be all right for me to tell  bit of it in my own words. So here goes:
Coyote and the Race of Frog and the Turtles
Frog had won races against many animals, each time for his win taking away their tail. One day, Coyote said to his friends, the turtles, “I will get back your tails for you, don’t worry!” He went to Frog and said, “Will you have a race with me and my friends? The stake is all our tails, mine and the turtles.”
Frog agreed, hoping to add Coyote’s beautiful tail to his collection.
But Coyote said to the turtles, “Here is what you must do. Dig yourselves into the path along the race track, one of you every few hundred meters. The first one of you must jump into the air and come back down hard to raise a big dust cloud. Then the next one digs himself back out of the ground, and also jumps up and makes a dust cloud, and so on.”
And that is what they did. The race began, and the first turtle jumped up and came down and made a big dust cloud. When the dust settled, Frog saw far ahead of him a turtle running along the track. He ran as fast as he could to catch up with him, but the turtle jumped and made another big cloud of dust. When that was gone, there was a turtle again, far ahead of Frog. He ran as fast as he could, but try as he might, he could not catch up with the turtle. Finally he saw a turtle crossing the finish line far ahead of him, and he collapsed on the ground.
“Oh please,” he said to Coyote, “I’m so exhausted, let me rest for a while!”
“Did you let the other animals rest before you took away their tails?” said Coyote. “No, you shall not rest! Give me back the turtles’ tails, and your own too!”
And that is why Frog is such a small, weak creature, who jumps into the water to hide his ugly backside which has no tail on it at all.
What struck me about this tale is how very much it is like the Grimms’ “The Hare and the Hedgehog”, the tale of how the quick, proud hare is being tricked by the slow, humble hedgehog and his wife into exhausting himself running back and forth and thus losing the race. Unlike the similar “Hare and the Tortoise” with its moral of “Slow and steady wins the race”, here the moral is “Simple people working together can beat the proud.” Two tales from almost opposite sides of the globe with nearly the same structure and message. I told David Florence about “The Hare and the Hedgehog”, and he laughed.
Incidentally, in the story of the race of Coyote and Crab, it’s Coyote himself who gets tricked. Crab clicks his pincers and gets hold of Coyote’s tail hairs, hanging on through the whole race. At the finish line, Coyote turns around looking for crab, and crab lets go, flying across the finish and winning the race. I learned today that sometimes, Coyote the Trickster can also be the tricked. I’m still chuckling about the image of Coyote whirling around, calling, “Crab? Where are you, Crab? Hey, Crab!”
In the long, cold, dark Northern winters of the past, David Florence told us, the Okanagan people gathered around the fire in the middle of their big pit house, a space probably about as large as the room we were in today. Their fire was not an art installation with digital projections, and they weren’t sipping hot chocolate from Tim Horton’s paper cups. But the stories are the same, whether they are told in Okanagan or in English.
Life, the Universe, A Fire and Folklore. Together the people are strong.
Picture
*Note: From my understanding, in First Nations storytelling the exact wording of the original teller is important. David Florence collected these tales from local people, and he read them to us from a paper so he would not “put his own words into it”. I appreciate his permission to tell a small part of it in my own words, and apologise for any mistakes I doubtlessly made in the retelling, having only heard the story once. If you want to read a very similar tale in the voice of a real Okanagan storyteller, check out “The Turtles Won the Race” told by Josephine Shuttlesworth (scroll to the bottom of the page past the error messages). In that one, it’s Coyote himself who gets tricked by the turtles, and it’s even more similar to “The Hare and the Hedgehog”.

Blog post from:

https://amovitam.ca/2018/02/12/fire-folklore-and-family-day/​
15 Comments
my website link
9/11/2018 04:06:57 am

Thanks for sharing this information. I really like your blog post very much. You have really shared a informative and interesting blog post with people..

Reply
Lake Country Art Gallery link
9/11/2018 02:05:02 pm

Thank you for the feedback - we have more articles to post soon, and we also invite contributors to add to the discussion about the Exhibitions we present at the gallery as well as any related topics that add interest to the exhibition themes and topics.
:o)
Petrina

Reply
Crypto Trading Signals link
8/20/2021 01:43:02 am

Thank you for the sensible critique. Me & my friend were just preparing to do a little research about this. We got a book from our local library but I think I learned more from this post. I’m very glad to see such magnificent info being shared freely out there.

Reply
aros de plata link
3/3/2022 04:46:40 am

Great .. Astounding .. I'll bookmark your blog and take the feeds likewise… I'm glad to discover such a significant number of valuable information here in the post, we need work out more procedures in such manner, a debt of gratitude is in order for sharing.

Reply
www.bigwinslot789.com link
3/6/2022 10:56:31 pm

This is just the information I am finding everywhere. An obligation of appreciation is all together for your site, I essentially buy in your online diary. This is a tolerable blog..

Reply
Start a Credit Card Processing Company link
3/8/2022 01:14:14 am

Your online journals are effectively open and very edifying so continue doing the astounding work folks.

Reply
https://strongtoto.com link
3/9/2022 03:03:32 am

definately enjoy every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff of your blog a must read blog!

Reply
Selling merchant processing services link
3/11/2022 05:04:10 am

It is imperative that we read blog post very carefully. I am already done it and find that this post is really amazing.

Reply
카지노다나와 link
3/14/2022 02:33:43 am

An interesting dialogue is price comment. I feel that it is best to write more on this matter, it may not be a taboo topic however usually individuals are not enough to talk on such topics. To the next. Cheers.

Reply
Swanson Full Spectrum Lemon Balm Capsules link
3/15/2022 12:07:12 am

An interesting dialogue is price comment. I feel that it is best to write more on this matter, it may not be a taboo topic however usually individuals are not enough to talk on such topics. To the next. Cheers.

Reply
fish foods link
3/15/2022 04:07:18 am

“Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.”

Reply
scrap car removal Burnaby link
3/15/2022 04:54:40 am

Your post has those certainties which are not open from anyplace else. It's my unassuming solicitation to u please continue composing such astounding articles

Reply
hair loss treatments for women link
3/16/2022 03:22:35 am

pleasant post, stay aware of this fascinating work. It truly regards realize that this subject is being secured likewise on this site so cheers for setting aside time to talk about this!

Reply
https://lessontoday.com/activity/p/1707000/ link
8/8/2022 05:29:47 am

I am unable to read articles online very often, but I’m glad I did today. This is very well written and your points are well-expressed. Please, don’t ever stop writing.

Reply
one pearl bank link
8/10/2022 09:22:50 am

Very useful info. Hope to see more posts soon!.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    LCAG Blog

    The LCAG Blog keeps the conversation going with various guest writers on current topics withing the local and global art discourse.

    Archives

    April 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    September 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    January 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly