Cda Storyteller Masterfully Keeps Indian Tales Alive

Rodney Frey is a caretaker of ancient stories.

Arms waving, fingers pointing, eyebrows working wildly up and down, the self-described shy professor spent an hour and a half Sunday sharing Indian legends with 65 children and adults at the Hayden Public Library.

“These stories represent what is most cherished, what is most sacred, to the Indian people,” Frey told his audience before he started the first story.

A professor of anthropology at Lewis-Clark State College’s Coeur d’Alene branch, Frey has spent two decades collecting Indian tales from Inland Northwest tribal elders. He’s become a master storyteller.

“This is my passion,” said Frey. “To help continue the voice of Indian elders is an awesome responsibility. I hope I’m doing it well.”

Judging from the reaction of the audience, Frey was doing fine.

Adults gazed with vague smiles, as if they’d forgotten what it’s like to hear a story told.

Children angled for a better view, or hunched over, elbows on knees, eyes wide.

Frey uses his whole body to tell a story. His hands weave and wave and circle and grip things that aren’t there - dip nets, sticks, fish traps. In his stories, repetition and motion often take the place of verbs.

“The salmon people there, the salmon people there, released to that stream,” he said, hands illustrating water pouring over a breached dam. “The salmon people released to that stream.”

When he spoke of characters or places, he pointed and gazed off in the distance, as if rivers and fishing platforms somehow were hiding in the library’s non-fiction section. When a woman in one tale was struck by a falling digging stick, a small girl in the second row whispered “Oww.”

Many of Frey’s stories come from the Crow tribe in Montana and the Coeur d’Alenes. Frey’s latest book, coming out in April, is titled “Stories That Make the World: Oral Literature of Indian Peoples of the Inland Northwest.” The cover credits the Coeur d’Alenes’ Lawrence Aripa and the late Tom Yellowtail, a Crow, as sources of the stories.

“These are not my stories; they belong to the elders,” Frey said afterward. “For whatever reasons, I’ve been entrusted with some stories.”

There is much for non-Indians in the legends, he said.

“We all yearn for the wonder and the mystery and the astonishment of a story,” Frey said. “These stories speak of this land, and we’re here. It’s part of our own identity, to a certain extent.”

Frey said he tries to stay true to Indian traditions with his storytelling. For example, stories about Coyote are told only in winter, up to the first spring lightning.

After telling the last of his stories Sunday, Frey looked out at his audience and asked the people to remember.

“It is important that these stories not be seen simply as a presentation,” he said. “These stories must continue. These are stories of this land, and the stories are meant to stay here.”