Native American Storytelling Helps Shatter Stereotypes

It was the kind of tale that could quiet a group of 80 boisterous schoolchildren: the legend of a white buffalo whose gift of a peace pipe brought harmony between two Crow tribes.

And after Martyne Van Hofwegen, a storyteller employed by the Capistrano Unified School District’s Indian Education Resource Center, finished weaving her tale of magic, dozens of small hands shot in the air.

“Um, is that story, like, true?” asked one fourth-grade boy at Barcelona Hills Elementary School in Mission Viejo.

Van Hofwegen smiled and replied: “It was very real to Crow children. I think you should get what is good out of any story.”

Since 1976, thousands of South County children, as well as hundreds of Native American students in the Capistrano district, have benefited from a federally funded program that helps them understand the Native American heritage and erases racial stereotypes.

The Capistrano district gets about $129,000 annually for its program, one of 1,200 nationwide. In Orange County, the only other such programs are in the Huntington Beach and Garden Grove school districts.

About 250 Native American students from grades seven to 12 were also tutored and given career counseling last year under the program. And approximately 4,000 schoolchildren in the Capistrano district were able to experience Native American culture firsthand.

Van Hofwegen is a storyteller and former elementary school teacher who studied Native American culture at UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz. And for the first time this year, the resource center is featuring the lifestyle and history of the local Juaneno tribe.

The center hired Jacque Nunez, a member of the Rios family, which has been in the San Juan Capistrano area for more than 200 years and live in what is considered the oldest home in California, to show how her tribe lived in South County before the Mission San Juan was built in the late 1700s.

Dressed in a full-length doeskin dress decorated with shells and rabbit fur, Nunez held up a bar of Zest hand soap and asked if any students knew how Native Americans washed themselves. Then she produced a hollowed stone bowl filled with ground Yucca root that Juanenos used as body soap.

“They didn’t go down to the Kmart and pick up what they needed,” she said. “They relied on Mother Earth.”

Juanenos wasted nothing, Nunez told the students, who hung onto her every word. Instead of buying pots, the Juanenos wove tightly-knit baskets that could hold water. The herb fennel was used instead of Pepto-Bismol for an upset stomach. The aloe plant served as an antiseptic for cuts.

“Do you like Skittles?” she asked, waving a bag of candy overhead. “Yes,” the children yelled back enthusiastically.

“Well, Juaneno kids liked candy too,” Nunez said, “And they ate sweet pinon nuts (from certain pine cones) like it was candy.”

Nunez, who also works as a preschool teacher, had two main messages for the kids: Native Americans were the planet’s first environmentalists and are not the ogres portrayed by generations of mass media and the entertainment industry.

“We never call this (planet) the ‘Earth, ‘ “ she said. “It is always Mother Earth. And we love her and take care of her like we do our mothers. Would you throw garbage at your mother?”

Like the youthful Asian, white and Latino faces in her audiences, Juanenos have fathers, mothers and are “human beings just like you,” Nunez said.

“We want to take away some of the negative ideas people get from television and the movies that show Indians as being mean and not liking white people,” she told the students. “When I leave here today, I will put on my blue jeans and look like anyone else.”

Although the main task of the Indian Education Resource Center is to help Native Americans with their schooling, program director Joe Wilson said, wiping out racial prejudices against Native Americans is a critical goal.

“This is an awareness program,” said Wilson, a Cherokee and 16-year employee of the Capistrano district. “Ignorance causes stereotyping, like the overwhelming concept that Indians can’t leave reservations. We have 400 to 500 Indian students who will participate in the program in some manner.”

Wilson is also happy to show youngsters the Juaneno way of life.

“In the past, we’ve had adequate materials on other tribes but there has been practically zero written in any format about the Juanenos,” he said. “We’re fortunate to have someone like Mrs. Nunez to explain their culture.”

Response from students has been enthusiastic, said Van Hofwegen.

“Every single day I see children drawn” to Native American culture, she said. “They feel like there is something there for them.”