In your mind, the time could be hundreds of years ago, and you’re sitting on a bluff high above the sea, enjoying ancient tales spun by a master Native American storyteller.
In reality, it’s a new event that will kick off the annual Penn Cover Water Festival. The time is the present but the stories are old, the storyteller is real, and you’re invited to pull up a piece of ground and listen.
Lou LaBombard, an Oak Harbor-based Native American, will share stories at the Fort Ebey State Park gun battery beginning at 7 p.m. Friday, May 11. If you want more, and you probably will, LaBombard can also be found Saturday, May 12, telling tales at the Penn Cove Water Festival in downtown Coupeville.
LaBombard said he enjoys seeing more organizations, such as state parks, getting involved with the annual festival that highlights Native American culture.
“It’s something that is needed,” LaBombard said. “It’s really starting to become more traditional as the years go by.”
An anthropology professor at Skagit Valley College’s Whidbey Island campus, LaBombard has been collecting Native American stories for 40 years and has been sharing them worldwide to eager listeners.
“I’ve told them from the East Coast to the central United States to here and Europe,” LaBombard said. He is a membor of the Seneca Nation of the Haudenosauncee (Iroquois confederacy).
Harvest Moon, an expert basket maker and Quinault tribal ambassador, is also scheduled to share her stories Saturday, along with Gene Tagaban, a Tlingit storyteller and actor.
Tagaban grew up listening to the songs and stories of Alaska’s Tlingit people and his work emphasizes the lessons people learn about their role in the natural world and the importance of family and lineage to their own identity.
The festival also features a plethora of Native American performers including Swil Kanim, the Tulalip Singers, Tsimshian Haayuuk Dancers, plus Central Whidbey’s omnipresent Shifty Sailors.
The Penn Cove Water Festival performances begin at 11:30 a.m. and the canoe races begin at noon. For more information, see page B-1 of today’s Whidbey News-Times.
