2025: Storytelling and Traditional Indigenous Artmaking
Artists & Elders in Residence
Fern Renville (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) &
Roger Fernandes (Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe)
FERN RENVILLE (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate)
Fern Renville is a storyteller, artist, playwright, and enrolled citizen of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate from the Lake Traverse reservation in South Dakota. Fern lives in the Dakota homelands of St. Paul, Minnesota, where she recently completed an artist residency at the Minnesota Historical Society investigating the role of nettle fiber in Dakota material culture. Fern’s most recent work has been introducing community members and students of all ages to Hasbe (hosh-PAY), the stinging nettle plant, sharing what she has learned about how to harvest, process, and prepare nettle fibers for cordage-making and spinning in a way that reclaims, nurtures, and celebrates an ancestral Dakota relationship with this strong, generous, and versatile plant relative while building a framework for understanding traditional storytelling as both teaching and healing.
ROGER FERNANDES (Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe)
Roger Fernandes is a Native American artist, storyteller, and educator whose work focuses on the culture and arts of the Coast Salish tribes of western Washington. He is a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe or Nəxʷsƛá̕ yə̕ m! and has a B.A. in Native American Studies from The Evergreen State College and an M.A. in Whole Systems Design from Antioch University. He has worked in a variety of arenas including Native education, social work, arts, and culture. As an artist he practices and teaches Coast Salish design and as a storyteller he shares storytelling as a foundational human process for teaching and healing. He currently teaches courses on storytelling and art at the University of Washington, Northwest Indian College, and other learning institutions.
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