-: Hello, my name is Roger Fernandes,
I'm a Native American artist, and storyteller, and educator,
I belong to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe,
we are known, in our real language,
as Nəxʷsƛ̕áy̕əm, which means strong people,
the English speakers couldn't say
Nəxʷsƛ̕áy̕əm̕ so they called us Klallam.
So I come from a strong people,
that's what Nəxʷsƛ̕áy̕əm means, strong people.
I'm gonna share a story with you,
because storytelling is teaching
and I wanna teach you something.
But I'm not like a classroom teacher
where I come in and kinda like tell you something,
give you a test or a quiz and you'll get the right answer.
A storytelling teacher just tells you the story.
You must find, in the story, what you have learned.
Because we're all different, we're gonna learn
different things from different stories.
I'm gonna share a story with you
that comes from our people here.
Before I tell you the story, I wanna clarify a
couple things, so you know when it comes in the story,
you'll know this stuff.
To the Native American people here,
the most important being in the world is the salmon.
Not us people, the salmon.
Everything here relies on salmon for life.
Seals eat salmon, bears eat salmon, eagles eat salmon,
whales eat salmon, people eat salmon, otters eat salmon,
the plants rely on the salmon returning from the ocean,
bringing their bodies up into the mountains,
the insects rely on them in the water,
the other little fish rely on them,
everything here built it's life around salmon,
so to us, the salmon's the most important being
in the world, and we, around here, the Indian people,
call them salmon people, the people who live
in villages under the ocean.
People like us, who live in villages under the ocean,
who become salmon, who put on salmon skin, become salmon,
they come up the rivers to feed the people
who live on the land, so that is the salmon
and the salmon people, the ones who
live in the villages under the ocean.
Now, they're doing something very powerful
and special for us, so we have to do something for them.
We do songs for them, dances for them,
ceremonies for them, we honor them,
and one way we honor them, is we put the salmon bones,
when we're done eating the salmon, back into the water.
Because we want them to use those bones again to come back.
So we return the salmon bones to the water,
this is the way we show respect to them.
So now you know these things.
Now when I tell the story, you'll understand
that part of the story.
A long time ago, in a village not far from here,
there lived a little boy,
and this was a very, very, very, bad little boy.
He was a really, really bad little boy,
he was always fighting, and lying, and cheating,
and stealing, complaining, mean to the little kids,
never did his work, talked back to the grown-ups,
he was a really bad little boy.
Well, in this village it was the job of the children
to take the salmon bones back to the water.
And when the grandpa said,
"it's time to take the salmon bones back to the water!"
All the children, except one,
ran up to the pile of salmon bones,
picked them up in their hands,
and walked out the door, going down the trail,
to return the salmon bones to the river.
All the children were doing this, except one,
and you know who that one was, right?
That rotten little boy, he said,
"no grandpa, I'm playing, leave me alone."
Grandpa said, "this is a very simple thing,
this is how we show respect
to the salmon people, do it now."
The boy said, "Alright," and he went
where the salmon bones were, but they were all gone,
except for a few little bones and dirt.
He scooped them up in his hand
and he walked out the door.
The little boy was walking really slow.
Following the other children down to the river
and pretty soon he couldn't see anybody,
and no one was around, so he threw
the salmon bones in the bushes.
He said, "there, no one will ever know."
Well, a few days later, he was playing
on some big rocks by the side of the river
and, accidentally, he slipped and he fell into the river.
The deepest part of the river
and he would have drowned,
except, under the water someone saved him.
Do you know who saved him, under the water?
The salmon people, and they took
him back to their village under the ocean,
and they took care of him, very good care of him.
They were kind and loving, they gave him good food,
they gave him warm blankets, all he had to do,
all day long, was run around the village
playing with the salmon children.
So that little boy said, "I love it here!
There so good to me, I'm gonna stay here forever,
I will never leave, I'm gonna live
with the salmon people now."
But, one day, something happened that changed everything.
One day, he was playing with the salmon children
and he saw a little salmon girl,
and she was hiding in the rocks by the village,
she was hiding in the rocks, by herself.
And the boy looked at her and wondered,
"what is going on?"
They kept playing and then, finally,
he saw her try to walk out,
and she was dragging one leg behind her.
As though she had no bones in her leg.
She couldn't lift up one arm, as though,
it hurt and she couldn't lift it up
because she had no bones in her arm.
No bones in her arms, no bones in her legs.
Right away, that little boy knew what happened.
He knew what happened, the bones he threw away
into the bushes, never made it back to the salmon people
and now this little girl was suffering.
She was in pain, because of him.
And he knew he had to do something.
So he went to the salmon people
and he said, "can you take me back to my village
on the land, I have important things to tell them there."
And the salmon people said, "yes,
we'll take you home but, if you leave us,
you may never return, you cannot
come back to our village, you'll be gone forever."
The boy thought and he said, "it's very important,
I must go," and so they took him back
to his village on the land
and he came walking out of the water.
Walking out of the water, in front of the village.
And the people saw him coming and they said,
"look, the little boy's coming back!"
They thought they would never see him again.
They thought he had drowned
and they would never see him again.
But here he was returning to them,
and they rushed up to hug him,
and to greet him, but the boy said,
"wait, wait, stop, I have important things to tell you.
First, that spoiled, rotten, mean little boy
that you used to know, that is not me anymore.
I have changed, I am a good person now,
and I must tell you what I have learned.
The things we do on the land,
effect the things that live in the water.
The things we do on the land,
effect the things that live in the water.
We must respect and protect the house of the salmon people.
We must respect and protect the house of the salmon people."
And this is what that little boy taught his people,
from the time he lived with the salmon people
in their villages under the ocean.
And that is all, the story called "Salmon Boy".
There are many ways to tell this story,
by different tribes, but it's always the same,
a boy returns to teach his people
something he learned from the salmon.
And I, again, as I said earlier,
what questions come out of this story?
How did this mean, rotten, terrible little boy
become a teacher of his people at the end of the story?
How would you explain that, how did he change?
What happened that made him change?
At the end, he said, "the things we do on the land
effect the things that live in the water."
What did he mean by that, what did he mean?
The things we do on the land,
how could that effect thing things that live in the water?
You must think about these things.
These are the things the story asked you to think about.
I'm not gonna give you answers,
I'm gonna give you questions
and I'm gonna show you how to make a salmon.
'Cause I have a very simple salmon design.
This is called Coast Salish, which is a name
they've given to all the tribes
of this region of Western Washington, by the salt water.
We live by the salt water, we speak a Salish language,
so we're called Coast Salish and this is our art.
And our art is very different than
what we call the totem pole art from up north in Alaska.
Our art is very different and I'm gonna show you.
It's based on three shapes, so get some paper
and pencil, we have three shapes we use in our art,
three shapes, all right, and if you can draw them,
which I know you can, then draw
them on the side of your paper, kind of like I'm doing.
The first shape is the circle,
you can do that, right, of course you can.
The second shape is called the crescent,
like the crescent moon, it's like the letter C,
with a smaller one inside of it,
and it go any direction, and it be long and skinny,
whatever it is, but anything that looks like that
slice of a circle, what call the crescent.
And the third shape is an interesting shape
because it looks like a shape we know,
but it's not that shape, what do I mean by that?
One, two, three.
A triangle, right, it's not a triangle.
It's called a trigon,
a triangle has straight sides, this has curved sides.
So, a curved-sided triangle, but to shorten that
a lot of the Native artists called it a trigon
and it looks like, again, anything
that has three sides, with curved sides, like that.
So those are all trigons.
Those are our three shapes: circle, crescent, trigon.
And how do we make our designs,
I'm gonna show you real simple to make a salmon design.
All right, first you gotta draw the shape of a salmon.
Or if you're gonna make a bear, the shape of a bear,
or the shape of an eagle, or the shape of a person,
and inside of it, you put circles, crescents, trigons.
That's how simple it is,
so I'm gonna make the shape of a salmon.
This takes a little bit of practice, but you can do it too.
So there's my salmon shape, all right?
Pretty good, now I'm gonna put
circles, crescent, trigons in it.
Now, this art is not just based on shape,
but also what's between the shapes.
Long, long conversation but I'm gonna show it to you simply.
I'm gonna make a circle, of an eye,
by doing something, well, I could go like this,
I could make a salmon eye like this,
if I wanted to and that's what a salmon eye looks like,
but I'm gonna show you a different way.
I'm gonna make a trigon and line it up another trigon,
and can you see a circle between them?
So the artist made you see
a circle by lining up two trigons.
So not just the shapes, but what's between the shapes.
That's how I'm gonna make my eye here.
Trigon, I'm gonna color it in, so you can see it as a shape.
Trigon, like that and I could put a circle in it
to make it look more like an eye, so there's my salmon eye.
Pretty good, now, the trigons fit very nicely
inside the fins of the salmon
because they're already triangular.
And I'm gonna make my tail, everybody makes their
own tail design, one, two,
now my shapes don't touch each other, always remember that,
my shapes don't touch each other, and four, all right.
But do you see between them, there's a circle?
Very good, so, to make my fin up here,
another trigon, color it in, whenever you do this design
color in these shapes, all right?
So you see them as shapes, not as just lines.
Then, what would make a good shape for a gill?
Oh, a crescent, looks just like a gill.
So I'm gonna make a crescent gill.
I wanna make the bones of the salmon,
one, two, three, four, trigons, color them in.
This is your part, you can use your own imagination
to make your own salmon now, you don't have to copy mine.
I could make another bigger one like this, another trigon.
Then I could put some eggs in here,
some mother salmon carrying the eggs up the river,
so there's my mother salmon and there's another one here,
like this, and more circles in here.
And then I could put a crescent in here,
just because I feel like it,
and I could put a different trigon like this, right here.
If I, again, now it's your idea, what you wanna do.
So, again, this is how we make our designs.
You draw the shape of the thing you're making,
person, animal, bear, eagle, whatever it is, thunderbird,
inside of it you put circles, crescents, trigons.
But it's not just the shapes,
it's also what's between the shapes.
So, hopefully, again, that's a simple little lesson.
Next time you see Coast Salish art,
look for those shapes: circles, crescents, trigons.
This is how we make our designs,
if you wanna copy this, that's wonderful.
But I also want you to make your own salmon design, okay?
So, again, thank you very much for letting me share
a little bit about our art with you.