Aboriginal Storytelling

Yesterday was our first day back to school after the winter break. We were lucky enough to start the year off with a very special guest, Mr. Bandura, who works for our school district as an Aboriginal cultural worker. He is one of several workers who present workshops to classes about different parts of Aboriginal culture. We are so lucky to have these terrific presenters available to us, especially since studying Aboriginal cultures is such a big part of our Social Studies curriculum in Grade 4.

Mr. Bandura explained how Aboriginal cultures traditionally told stories to pass on information from generation to generation. One important thing we learned is that stories are traditionally told orally without the use of books. We were impressed to learn that a master storyteller might know as many as 250 stories from memory!

Mr. Bandura also makes traditional drums, so he taught us about how drums are made and how they can be used in storytelling. He used one of his deer-hide drums as he told us a legend about how the stars were created. It was a beautiful story.

At the end of presentation everyone got to try playing the drum which had very deep sound.

Hych'ka siem, Mr. Bandura!
(As you can see we also learned how to say "thank you"!)