Storytelling as a Mutual Experience
Screenshot of student artifacts from MacEwan University’s ANTH394 class
This is a post from Dr. Jennifer Long from MacEwan University. She teaches ANTH394, a course on ethnographic research methods, and has partnered with the Recover team. Dr. Long is interested in understanding how ordinary individuals reinforce and influence community belonging.
An earlier blog provided an overview of a collaborative project among the students in my Ethnographic Methods class and Recover. Yet that blog was just the tip of the iceberg. As the instructor involved in this work, I want to expand on the important role of storytelling in this project.
So, what’s in a story?
Dr. Jo-ann Achibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem speaks about Indigenous Storytelling as having two kinds of “lessons” or understandings. First, there are understandings that one takes away from the specific story, for example, the point, the lesson, the nugget of information. Second, there are lessons or skills that can be taken by the method of storytelling, for example, when and how is this story shared? With whom? Dr. Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s work helps me understand that storytelling should be understood as a symbiotic relationship between the storyteller and the story listener. In her work, she goes on to advocate that lessons within stories are received by the listener, whose own understandings shape the outcome of that story. As a privileged settler on Treaty 6 territory, I am grateful for this lesson shared by Dr. Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem as it helped shape both my collaborative approach with Recover team members and with my students, and how I designed the tasks (assignments) for my students.
“I appreciate the flexible nature of learning through storytelling. Storytelling as something ‘relational’ or personal means that as I reflect on my experiences in class, I pull new things from the stories. Fortunately, the holistic and compassionate foundations of storytelling encourage our openness to relearn.”
On the surface, this project afforded my students an opportunity to listen to others’ stories (the 142 individuals, living within amiskwacîwâskahikan, Edmonton, who took the time to prepare and give statements on policing for an audience of City of Edmonton employees), and learn about their different experiences. My students had a readily available data set that they could transcribe, code, analyze and write up research results. As an academic in charge of students’ education and meeting specified learning outcomes, this material and the opportunity to work with Recover, certainly allowed my students first-hand experience with research methods, develop professionalism, and public-facing communication skills.
These outcomes, however, only highlight the skills gained on an individual level. What about the skills gained by my students when they worked together? Or when they listened and learned from community guest lectures and meetings with Recover team members? What doesn’t come through in this first piece is that this opportunity provided so much more.
“Being a part of the ANTH394 course gave me insight into the diversity of views related to a community’s well-being. I gained an appreciation of the needs of the public hearing speakers, who were aiming for more inclusive ways that would pave the way to meaningful connections and relationships. ”
Through various assignments, I asked my students to delve deep into what was said, who said it, and why. In addition to this, I asked my students to place themselves in a relational position, that is, to think about what was meaningful for them (and why). This approach allowed them to insert themselves into the context of the stories as both a community member and story listener. In one assignment, for example, students were asked to pull out and reflect on impactful statements from their ‘story set’ (data set + stories = story set) and develop an archetype (typically called a persona in the design thinking world) around this profound theme or concept. In this work, the students were asked to think about this concept holistically, that is, thinking through what led to this idea (the how and why) and to connect this theme to what the panelist(s) described as their hope for the future. This future could include a changed relationship with the police or what a future Edmonton could look like. This task allowed my students to insert themselves into the story process by first identifying a meaningful idea from the stories they listened to, to work with these ideas, and then craft their own stories around it – which they then shared with their colleagues (the students, myself, the Recover team).
In such an approach, the reflection, discussion, and relational work with these stories features Dr. Archivald Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s two lessons about storytelling and her call to think about the relationality of the storytelling process. I think such an approach provides an opportunity for students to treat stories as something precious and to handle such stories with care. This means that the work I asked of the students required that they pay attention to who was telling the story, how the stories were told, and to think about their outputs as part of a larger community response in which they were community stakeholders.
I believe this storytelling process aligns with Recover’s approach to urban wellness, specifically their focus on context through place and space making, and I can only look forward to our future mutual endeavors.