Storyteller shares native wisdom By JILLIAN COMPTO

[Okwes]

Storyteller shares native wisdom By JILLIAN COMPTON

JOHNSBURG â€" Some of Jesse
Clearwater’s kindergarten classmates teased him about his long
hair.

When he told his father he wanted to cut it, Clearwater’s father
explained that the Taras tribe viewed hair as a symbol of morality. Long
hair indicated one was following the right path.

“If you ever shame your family, you cut your hair,”
Clearwater remembered his father saying. “You decide if you want
to cut your hair.”

Clearwater didn’t. His hair, now gray, flowed down his back as he
told St. John The Baptist Catholic School students about the importance
of family and community. He shared stories and American Indian
traditional items for the school’s culmination of Catholic
Schools Week on Friday.

“When people are telling you a story, listen because
that’s how we learn,” he said. “It’s
important. It’s powerful.”

The Taras (pronounced TAR-oz) lived throughout California, New Mexico
and Arizona in hunting clans that moved with food and weather,
Clearwater said. Smaller than tribes such as the Cheyenne or Apache, the
U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs does not recognize the Taras. They do not
have a reservation.

Rather, they pass their culture from generation to generation and
practice traditions in places such as the American Indian Center in
Chicago and the Trickster Gallery in Schaumburg, he said.

Clearwater told the students about a blind boy who rode his horse in a
local race by memorizing the course. He told them how his grandmother
compared life to a canoe that should only be filled with necessities,
such as family, education and community.

“Don’t overfill your canoe,” he said she told him.
“There are going to be waves, rocks. Don’t take things you
don’t need.”

He told them about the potato dance, in which two people dance
nose-to-nose while trying to balance a potato between them. He told them
how a Taras man offers a woman a buffalo blanket after he shares his
dreams, his strengths, his weaknesses and his family history with her
and she agrees to marry him.

He gave the school a peace arrow, which is meant to point east to
represent beginnings. In return, the teachers and students presented
himself with a wool blanket of the Circle of Life symbol to thank him
for sharing his time and talents.

Clearwater had explained that traditional storytellers don’t
accept payment beyond a blanket, a meal or tobacco.

“You can’t put a price,” he said, “on the
story of life.”