 Hello, my name is Roger Fernandez. I'm a Native American artist and storyteller and educator. I belong to the Lower Elwa Clalem tribe. We are known in our real language as Nixkleum, which means strong people. The English speakers couldn't say Nixkleum, so they call us Clalem. And so I come from the strong people. That's what Nixkleum means, strong people. I'm going to share a story with you, because storytelling is teaching, and I want to teach you something. I'm not like a classroom teacher where I come in and kind of tell you something, give you a test or a quiz, and they'll get the right answer. A storytelling teacher just tells you the story. You must find in the story what you have learned, because we're all different. We're going to learn different things from different stories. So I'm going to share a story with you that comes from our people here. Before I tell you the story, I want to clarify a couple of things. So you know when it comes to the story, you'll know this stuff. To the Native American people here, the most important being in the world is the salmon. Everything here relies on salmon for life. Seals eat salmon, bears eat salmon, eagles eat salmon, whales eat salmon, people eat salmon, autos eat salmon, the plants rely on the salmon returning from the ocean, bringing their bodies up into the mountains, the insects rely on them in the water, the other little fish rely on them. Everything here builds its life around salmon. So to us, the salmon is the most important being in the world. And we around here, the Indian people, call them salmon people, the people who live in villages under the ocean. People like us who live in villages under the ocean, who become salmon, who put on salmon skin become salmon. They come up the rivers to feed the people who live on the land. So that is the salmon and the salmon people, the ones who live in the villages under the ocean. Now, they're doing something very powerful and special for us, so we have to do something for them. We do songs for them, dances for them, ceremonies for them. We honor them. And one way we honor them is we put the salmon bones when we're done eating the salmon back into the water because we want them to use those bones again to come back. So we return the salmon bones to the water. This is the way we show respect to them. So now you know these things. Now, when I tell the story, you'll understand that part of the story. A long time ago, in a village not far from here, there lived a little boy. And this was a very, very, very bad little boy. He was a really, really bad little boy. He was always fighting and lying and cheating and stealing, complaining, mean to the little kids, never did his work, talked back to the grown-ups. He was a really bad little boy. Well, in this village, it was a job for the children to take the salmon bones back to the water. And when the grandpa said, it's time to take the salmon bones back to the water, all the children, except one, ran up a pile of salmon bones, picked them up in their hands and walked out the door, going down the trail to return the salmon bones to the river. All the children were doing this except one. And you know who that one was, right? That rotten little boy. He said, no, grandpa, I'm playing. Leave me alone. Grandpa said, this is a very simple thing. This is how we show respect to the salmon people. Do it now. He said, all right. And he went where the salmon bones were, but they were all gone except for a few little bones in the dirt. He scooped them up in his hand and he walked out the door. The little boy was walking really slow, following the children down the river. And pretty soon he couldn't see anybody and no one was around. So he threw the salmon bones in the bushes. He said, there, no one will ever know. Well, a few days later he was playing on some big rock by the side of the river. And accidentally he slipped and he fell into the river, the deepest part of the river. And he would have drowned except under the water, someone saved him. Do you know who saved him under the water? The salmon people. And they took him back to their village under the ocean and they took care of him. Very good care of him. They were kind and loving. They gave him good food. They gave him warm blankets. All he had to do all day long was run around the village playing with the salmon children. And so that little boy said, I love it here. They're so good to me. I'm going to stay here forever. I will never leave. I'm going to live with the salmon people now. But one day something happened that changed everything. One day he was playing with the salmon children and he saw a little salmon girl and she was hiding in the rocks by the village. She was hiding in the rocks by herself and the boy looked at her and wondered, what is going on? And they kept playing and then finally he saw her try to walk out. And she was dragging one leg behind her as though she had no bones in her leg. She couldn't lift up one arm as though it hurt and she couldn't lift it up because she had no bones in her arm. No bones in her arms, no bones in her legs. Right away that little boy knew what happened. He knew what happened. The bones he threw away into the bushes never made it back to the salmon people. And now this little girl was suffering. She was in pain because of him and he knew he had to do something. So he went to the salmon people and he said, can you take me back to my village on the land? I have important things to tell them there. And the salmon people said, yes, we'll take you home but if you leave us, you may never return. You cannot come back to our village. He'll be gone forever. And the boy thought and he said, it's very important. I must go. And so they took him back to the village on the land and he came walking out of the water, walking out of the water in front of the village and the people saw him coming and they said, look, the little boy's coming back. They thought they would never see him again. They thought he had drowned and they would never see him again. But here he was returning to them and they rushed up to hug him and agreed him but the boy said, wait, wait, stop. I have important things to tell you. First, that spoiled rotten mean little boy that you used to know, that is not me anymore. I have changed. I am a good person now. And I must tell you what I have learned. The things we do on the land affect the things that live in the water. The things we do on the land affect the things that live in the water. We must respect and protect the house of the Salmon people. We must respect and protect the house of the Salmon people. And this is what that little boy taught his people from the time he lived with the Salmon people in their villages under the ocean. And that is all the story called Salmon Boy. And there are many ways to tell this story by different tribes, but it's always the same. A boy returns to teach his people something he learned from the Salmon. And I, again, as I said earlier, what questions come out of this story? How does this mean rotten, terrible little boy become a teacher of his people at the end of the story? How would you explain that? How did he change? What happened that made him change? At the end he said, the things we do on the land affect the things that live in the water. What did he mean by that? What did he mean? The things we do on the land, how could that affect the things that live in the water? You must think about these things. These are the things the story asks you to think about. I'm not going to give you answers. I'm going to give you questions. And I'm going to show you how to make a Salmon design, a very simple Salmon design. This is called Coast Salish, which is a name they've given to all the tribes of this region of western Washington by the saltwater. We live by the saltwater. We speak the Salish language. So we're called Coast Salish. And this is our art. And our art is very different than what we call the Totempole art from up north in Alaska. Our art is very different. And I'm going to show you. It's based on three shapes. So get some paper and pencil. We have three shapes we use in our art. Three shapes, all right? And if you can draw them, which I know you can, then draw them on the side of your paper kind of like I'm doing. The first shape is the circle. You can do that, right? Of course you can. The second shape is called the crescent, like the crescent moon. It's like the letter C with a smaller one inside of it. And it go any direction. And it be long and skinny, whatever it is. But anything that looks like that slice of a circle, we call the crescent. And the third shape is an interesting shape because it looks like a shape we know, but it's not that shape. What do I mean by that? One, two, three. Triangle, right? It's not a triangle. It's called a trigon. A triangle has straight sides and it has curved sides. So a curved-sided triangle. But to shorten that, a lot of the native art is called the trigon. And it looks like, again, anything that has three sides with curved sides like that. So those are all trigons. Those are our three shapes. Circle, crescent, trigon. And how do we make our designs? I'm going to show you a real simple way to make a salmon design. All right? First, you've got to draw the shape of a salmon. Or if you're going to make a bear, the shape of a bear, or the shape of an eagle, or the shape of a person. And inside of it, you put circles, crescent, trigons. That's how simple it is. So I'm going to make the shape of a salmon. This takes a little bit of practice, but you can do it too. So there's my salmon shape. All right? Pretty good. Now I'm going to put circles, crescent, trigons in it. Now, this art is not just based on shapes, but also what's between the shapes. Long, long conversation. But I'm going to show it to you simply. I'm going to make a circle of an eye. By doing something, well, I could go like this. I could make a salmon eye like this if I wanted to. And that's what a salmon eye looks like. But I'm going to show you a different way. I'm going to make a trigon and line it up another trigon. And can you see a circle between them? So the artist made you see a circle by lining up two trigons. So not just the shapes of what's between the shapes. That's what I'm going to make my eye here. Trigon. I'm going to color it in so you can see it as a shape. Trigon. Like that. And I could put a circle in to make it look more like an eye. So there's my salmon eye. Pretty good. Now, the trigons look very nicely inside the fins of the salmon because they're already triangular. And I'm going to make my tail. Everybody makes their own tail design. One. Now my shapes don't touch each other. Always remember that. My shapes don't touch each other. And four. All right. But do you see between them there's a circle? Very good. So to make my fin up here, another trigon. Color it in. Whenever you do this design, color in these shapes. All right. So you see them as shapes. Not just lines. Then what would make a good shape for a gill? Ooh. A crescent. Looks just like a gill. So I'm going to make a crescent gill. I want to make the bones of the salmon. One. Two. Three. Four. Trigons. Color them in. This is your part. You can use your own imagination to make your own salmon now. You don't have to copy mine. I could make another bigger one like this. Another trigon. Then I could put some eggs in here. It's a mother salmon carrying the eggs up the river. So there's my mother salmon. And there's another one here. Like this. And more circles in here. And then I could put a crescent in here because I feel like it. And I could put a different trigon like this right here. Again, now it's your idea of what you want to do. So again, this is how we make our designs. You draw the shape of the thing you're making. Person, animal, bear, eagle, whatever it is. Thunderbird. Inside of it you put circles, crescent, trigons. But it's not just the shapes. It's also what's between the shapes. So hopefully, again, that's a simple little lesson. Next time you see Coast Salish Art, look for those shapes, circles, crescent, trigons. This is how we make our designs. If you want to copy this, that's wonderful. But I also want you to make your own salmon design. Okay? So again, thank you very much for letting me share a little bit about our art with you.