Northern Arts and Cultural Centre partnered with CKLB Radio

Being Jim Green’s blog of a recent storytelling adventure.

I shuffled aboard a Northwestern Air Lease plane and left Fort Smith at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, September 13th; a glorious morning in the summertime. Had a right peaceful nap as we droned north over the cotton. When we dropped below the clouds over the bay on the approach to Yellowknife, Great Slave Lake looked cold and dark, whitecaps slopping lazily along the surface.

I’m always amazed how small the big lake looks from the air. Much smaller than it was when my paddling partner Juneva and I took 22 days to paddle from Fort Smith to Yellowknife, navigating the lake through the Simpson Islands.

The gracious Northern Arts and Culture Centre (NACC) executive and artistic director Marie Coderre met me at the airport and whisked me off to Javaroma for coffee and cranberry muffins, my all-time favorite. Good beginnings.

A busy day, Friday. I was on CKLB radio live with the dynamic Director of Radio Deneze Nakehk’o in the morning pumping the Ko K’e Storytelling Festival.  Had breakfast with the “boys” at the old timers table in the Diner. It wasn’t the Miners Mess but it felt some good, especially the part where I held a $21,000.00 gold nugget in the palm of my hand.

Back at CKLB with Deneze at noon pushing my new spoken word album, MAGIC WORDS: travel tales from the ice coast.  The year 1972 seems like a long time ago when our daughter was born in Taloyoak, called Spence Bay in the old days, and I scribbled the notes for MAGIC WORDS on a steno pad. Had lunch with the folks at CKLB – warm fry bread and baked lake trout fresh from the Horn Plateau courtesy of Deneze Nakehk’o’s Dad Jim Antoine.

Made a good contact with Angela Sterritt at CBC and dropped off CD’s for her at the studio.

Met with Northern News Service Entertainment editor, Danielle Sachs, gave her CDs, angling for a review of MAGIC WORDS; she came through in spades:

“From the nostalgic to the hilarious, Green’s stories interweave Inuit legends with his own stories – keeping them separate but side-by-side. Green’s poignant voice effortlessly brings the listener back to a time they may never have seen, and a place they may never have visited…. From the humorous to the stark and realistic, Green brings you into his living room before opening the curtains and taking you out on the land with him…. His descriptions of butchering seals, with the sound of the slide whistle in the background, brings the listener to the camp. We can smell the warm blood in the air, and hear the dog teams begging for their piece of the action.

Listeners will be mesmerized and find themselves listening to Green’s tales again and again.”
Danielle Sachs, Entertainment editor/Northern News Service, Sept. 21, 2013.

William Greenland

William Greenland, long-time Gwichìn CKLB radio broadcaster (guitar and Native American flute) and CKLB radio Dehcho Yati host Lawrence Nayally (drummer) launched the eighth annual NACC storytelling festival by entertaining the crowd in the NACC foyer before Tanya Tagaq’s awesome sold out show on Friday night.

Northern Journal Article on NWT event at National Arts Centrein Ottawa April 30, 2013

by JACK DANYLCHUK
Northern Journal
Tue, Jun 19, 2012

Spilling anecdotes and spouting tall tales, with plenty of body language for emphasis, a busload of Northern storytellers took to the road last week with the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre’s annual festival.
The theme this year is “Transitions,” Ben Nind, NACC director, told the opening night audience Friday at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. “We challenge the tellers and the listeners to reveal themselves in the light, life and laughter of the stories.”

Opening the week-long festival in Yellowknife, Dawn Lacey riffed on buns; her own, “still firm at 60,” she joked, and the “overnight buns” she loves to bake: whole wheat and white, sweetened with honey, and her favourite, cinnamon, sticky with icing.

Buns were the perfect metaphor, creating an audience of hungry listeners by the time Paul Seesequasis took the stage.

Seesequasis, until recently a desk-bound arts bureaucrat, remarked on his own transition from writer to storyteller, and the difference between words on and off the page.

“I’m not really a storyteller,” he confessed, and read excerpts from his book, The Tobacco Wars, a faux history of Pocahontas, that takes Powhatan’s daughter from the forests of the New World to the fetid streets of 17th century London.

Anthony Foliot, introduced as “bard of the barge on the bay,” told stories drawn from his adventures with Skipper Dave as a deckhand with the East Arm Freighting Company. His delivery channeled the rhyming style of Robert Service and the good natured bombast of the Snow-King, the central character in Foliot’s annual winter performance piece on Yellowknife Bay.

Fort Smith raconteur Jim Green related an almost believable tale of a misplaced body, a bootlegger, a Yellowknife tow truck driver (who was an undertaker when opportunity dictated) and baffled police.

The story was lifted from a collection of stories that started as a novel but never made it to print. The book cover, a tapestry of Gold Range characters drawn by Walt Humphries, now decorates a CD that Green merrily sold at the end of his performance.

Michael Kusugak, Moira Cameron, Pat Braden, Judy Sharp, Scott McQueen and John B Zoe appeared Saturday afternoon and evening at the Heritage Centre café before the festival took to the road.

The tour passed through Behchoko on Monday, stopped in Fort Providence on Tuesday and then headed for Kakisa. The show closes in Fort Smith this Saturday after appearances in Hay River on Thursday and Enterprise on Friday.

“This is an exciting event both for the communities and the tellers from here at home and beyond,” said Nind. “Each concert is different and each story significant.”