Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit (review)

Indigenous Storywork is a rare and truly innovative work that illuminates new practices and contexts for the ethical use of Indigenous oral history and tradition as an educational tool. Author Jo-Ann Archibald, also known as Q”um Q”um Xiiem, is from the Stó:lô First Nation in British Columbia. Drawing upon her personal and professional learning journey with Stó:lô elders, she historicizes the impacts of colonialism on the oral traditions of the Stó:lô people. Combining this knowledge with a critical analysis of academic debates related to Indigenous orality and literacy, she sets out to establish a holistic context for understanding and integrating Indigenous orality into contemporary models of education and pedagogy. Archibald relates that she coined the term storywork “because I needed a term that signified that our stories and storytelling were to be taken seriously” (3). She explains that “an Indigenous philosophical context for holism refers to the interrelatedness between the intellectual, spiritual (metaphysical values and beliefs and the Creator), emotional and physical (body and behaviour/action) realms to form a whole healthy person” (11). Archibald identifies seven principles of storywork: respect, responsibility, reverence, reciprocity, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy. She argues that to attain the goal of holism as it pertains to the use and transmission of Indigenous oral history, “one must respect and adhere to the ways of acquiring knowledge and codes of behaviour” (11) of the people. She fully explicates an Indigenous context for holism in Chapter 3, “Learning about Storywork from Stó:lô Elders,” by grounding the concepts of holism and storywork in the cultural teachings, practices, and lessons passed on to her from Stó:lô elders. Of particular interest to oral historians will be Chapter 5, “Storywork in Action” and Chapter 6, “Storywork Pedagogy,” in which she presents a series of considerations related to the use of oral history in an educational setting. Drawing upon her work on the First Nations Journeys of Justice Curriculum Project, she advances a series of ethical principles for engaging in Indigenous storywork, which include obtaining permission to enter a cultural territory, respecting cultural protocol, handling verification responsibly, as well as moving beyond intellectual property rights through reciprocity (144). In addition, she presents a number of “issues that won’t go away” (146), which include “using published and archival stories, keeping the spirit of the story alive, and whether non-Indigenous teachers can tell Indigenous stories” (146). As she candidly observes, “Indigenous storywork is not an easy process, but is essential to educating the mind, body and spirit which is what we mean by Indigenous education” (143).

Archibald writes in a highly reflexive and accessible style, one which weaves together myth and story, anecdote, and literary critique. Her writing style has a level of personal transparency and clarity that illustrates her unique voice within academia. It is not lost to the reader, given the focus on orality in this work, that reading it evokes a feeling that one is listening to Archibald speak.

The structure of her book is both innovative and unconventional. She describes the connection between the structure of her book and a cultural practice of her people, weaving: “I resisted doing an expositive book summary of the seven Storywork principles of respect, responsibility, reverence, reciprocity, holism, interrelatedness and synergy. Each principle has a separateness that is like a long flat piece of cedar bark used for weaving a basket” (153).

This work makes a significant contribution to several distinct historiographic areas. Archibald notes that her notions about the interrelationship between place, Indigenous identity, and place-based stories have been reinforced by Indigenous scholars such as N. Scott Momaday, Vine Deloria, Jr., and Leslie Marmon Silko, and by non-Indigenous scholars Keith Basso and Julie Cruikshank (74). Indigenous Storywork also contributes to an essential and growing body of work written by Indigenous scholars who seek to develop ethical, moral, local, and culturally sensitive principles for research practice involving Indigenous peoples...