Story telling is a tradition that has been loved and practiced for hundreds, even thousands of years, by native people across the globe.

Perhaps without realizing it at first, in an age without Internet, TV, radio or even the movable type printing press, storytellers were passing down culture and heritage to new generations who would in turn do the same.

As with many other traditions, the 20th century mass media revolution has all but wiped out story telling amongst those whose culture survived upon it, including the native Alaskan people. However, they’re not going down without a fight it seems, with the arrival of a new initiative to reinvigorate the tradition.

Elizabeth Jones, a native Alaskan and key speaker at the First Alaskans Institute’s Elders and Youth Conference in Fairbanks, which aims to restore storytelling amongst younger people, said that the older generations who participated in story telling will have to work closely with the local youth population to teach the art of story telling and as such keep their culture and heritage alive.

The conference, which finished last Wednesday promoted Alaskan native culture through song, dance and of course story telling. This however is just the start of the initiative, headed by several key people within the Alaskan community.

The mammoth task of revitalizing the Alaskan stories is close to Jones’ heart. She worked with the University of Alaska Fairbanks as a language transcriber for numerous years and has lived there her whole life. She also authored the Koyukon Athabascan Dictionary with the help of notes collected by a late Jesuit priest who lived amongst the Koyukon people before Jones was even born.

Story telling is now a completely lost practice in much of the developed world as countless recessions and booms in technology caused native people to disintegrate and spread within the majority of the population. And it’s a shame too, as now many of the great fables and tales are only kept alive on paper, and as much as it pains me to say it as a writer, they’re just not the same.

By striving to keep the ancient practice of story telling alive, the Alaskan natives touch upon the very essence of native story telling, which is the appreciation of culture and heritage through close family and community bonding.

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Dean has 6 post(s) at Free Writing Center