Wounaan Storying as Intervention: Storywork in the Crafting of a Multimodal Illustrated Story Book on People and Birds

Doris Cheucarama Membache,Rito Ismare Peña,Dorindo Membora Peña,Julie Velásquez Runk,Frankie Grin,Chenier Carpio Opua,Chindío Peña Ismare

doi:10.3390/genealogy5040091

Doris Cheucarama Membache, Rito Ismare Peña + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5040091

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Abstract

A growing body of scholarship addresses what Indigenous peoples have always known: stories are critically important to who we are and how to be in the world. For Wounaan, an Indigenous people of Panama and Colombia, ancestors’ stories are no longer frequently told. As part of the Wounaan Podpa Nʌm Pömaam (National Wounaan Congress) and Foundation for the Development of Wounaan People’s project on bird guiding, birds and culture, and forest restoration in Panama, we leveraged the publication requirement as political intervention and anticolonial practice in storying worlds. This article is the story of our storying, the telling and crafting of an illustrated story book that honors Wounaan convivial lifeworlds, Wounaan chaain döhigaau nemchaain hoo wënʌʌrrajim/Los niños wounaan, en sus aventuras vieron muchas aves/The Adventures of Wounaan Children and Many Birds. Here, we have used video conference minutes and recordings, voice and text messages, emails, recollections, and a conference co-presentation to show stories as Indigenous method and reality, as epistemological and ontological. We use a narrative form to weave together our collaborative process and polish the many storying decisions on relationality, time, egalitarianism, movement, rivers, embodiment, and verbal poetics through an everyday adventure of siblings and birds. Available as a multimodal illustrated story book in digital audio and print, we conclude by advocating for new media to further storying Indigenous lifeworlds.

Highlights

“Stories remind us of who we are and of our belonging
Upon finalizing the grant paperwork in late July, our team met through video conferencing, as Julie Velásquez Runk (JVR) was in the U.S Following our first project, we talked about creating a book about “all” Wounaan–bird relationships about dances, omens, naveling, stories, and bird illustrations
We reviewed the decision to make an illustrated book about Wounaan relationships with birds, and established that it would be written in Wounaan meu, with Spanish and English secondary to it

Summary

Introduction

“Stories remind us of who we are and of our belonging. Stories hold within them knowledges while simultaneously signifying relationships . . . stories can never be decontextualized from the teller. This story, that is, this article, is based on Wounaan meu, Spanish, and English conversations, video conference recordings, voice and text messages, meeting minutes, notes, recollections, and a recent conference co-presentation.

Results

Conclusion