Duncan Mercredi: Storytelling

Duncan Mercredi was in from Manitoba at his second Ottawa engagement this week on Friday night. What a sweet evening at Gallery 101, with time sweeping away in the best sense. When one speaks to entertain, to engage, stories are structured in a different way than the page.
(He was also in town with Prairie Scene with the Writer’s fest last spring but I’d missed that.)
He opened and closed the evening with a soothing lullabye that his grandmother used for storytelling evenings. That both set the tone, and in the case of a mixed crowd could soothe the distraction of any fretting babies. It wouldn’t work for cell phones but crowds are educated these day and none wrong to disperse the spell.
[This picture on right is by Max Middle]
He is a traditional Cree-Métis storyteller and poet, this time brought to town in a couple engagements by Max Middle who is pictured below introducing him:

The storyteller brought about 40 people out to Gallery 101. Duncan is also the author of four poetry collections, including The Duke of Windsor, Wolf and Shadows and one more which is getting close to completion.
His grandmother, his kookum, spoke Cree and Michif. She married at age 13 to his grandfather who was Dene. In the traditional way, his grandfather joined the family of his wife. Duncan’s family was Cree and Michif.
Before his birth, his grandmother-to-be said the third-born grandchild, girl or boy, would inherit her role as the keeper of stories. When Duncan was 4 his kookum began training him for his role. His other kookum was key in encouraging him to keep on, as was a neighbour and, when he was 30, Naomi Campbell instructed him, he better continue it: “you have a job to do”. Mercredi has since begun training his own grandson to take over from him.
Because he was the storyteller in training, he lived a little differently than other boys. Should someone come down river with news, he would be brought to listen and train his memory. It didn’t matter if it were dawn or midnight, if it took all night or more than one night. He’d listen with his grandmother and she would later test his memory, ask him to recite what he remembered. Once he offered the first story and she said, no that’s too easy. Anyone can remember what comes first or last. It is the middle that is harder, where details get muddled. Tell me the fourth story.
She trained him in two types of stories: family stories and traditional stories.
Family stories are the records of the community, who married, who was born, who was playing around with who, who died, all the whats and whens.
People come to the story tellers to give the information and have it kept. They used to travel the river system with news each spring of what happened over the winter. She said, you can’t let errors into these histories or you mark the family forever. Lost details can’t be recovered. Details matter.
The other type are the traditional stories. These legends can change according to the audience and the lesson to illustrate. The characters may be constant but the telling is catered to people and purpose.
By telling stories you keep information. It takes just a word for a memory to surface. He was asked years ago if he had any werewolf stories. He didn’t think he did then a Winnipeg lady mentioned, you might know it by Roogaroo and suddenly, 3 or 4 stories that he didn’t know he’d been told came forward.
He told a couple stories of Roogaroo. In one she comes as a Huntress to the village, giving free food so that the villagers could have free time to do other things. In exchange after 2 years she asked for their 17-year-old boys, one by one, using them up, making them old men within a week until one woman refuses and breaks the pact to save her future, her son. To save one son or to lose him both can be argued as for the good of the one, or the good of the many.
The Roogaroo emerged from
two traditions: the French-Canadian werewolf (loup garou) and the Cree Shape-shifter. Each village may have its own ending to the story but the general story is the same. She is often a young woman, long black hair, pale skin, beautiful and unaging. She has magic and may change into a wolf.
He also told the story of his cousin who pooh-poohed as superstition the idea that playing Solitaire on Sunday was playing against the devil. Legend is that if you play at midnight on Sunday the last card you lay is the Jack of Spades, the devil’s card. If you walk 4 times around the house counterclockwise the devil will meet you at the door. Just to be contrary, his cousin set out to prove it wrong. Shall I retell you how it ends? Could I well enough?

He could own the room, pull people into the world he created in the air, hook and release, cause laughter and tenterhooks. He speaks with ease and drama and grace. Simply wonderful to experience a skilled storyteller.
The cousin who scoffed drew the Jack and went out. He walked around the house, once, twice, and as he did, the winter wind died down. The family inside could hear him do the circuits of the house, third. At the end of the 4th loop, silence. They waited. Finally Duncan’s little brother crept out to see. A step, another and then.
His cousin jumped out from behind the door and yelled. Proud of being fine and wise, he walked himself home. At this time before hydro, houses were far apart. There was a graveyard between his cousin’s house and his own. He walked boldly even when the trail narrowed past the graveyard and into the dark of snowy woods. He thought he heard footsteps not his own. He walked faster. They went faster. He got out of breath. He could still hear footsteps. He felt a breath at his neck. He ran. He heard running. He slowed down to breathe. A voice behind him said stop. He felt fingers at his back. He bolted, breath or no breath and ran. He felt fingers down his back, was told to stop. He got to his house and fell down over the doorstep. His grandmother looked up from his chair inquiringly. He overexplained how he was eager to be home and felt he was late and should run. As he turned to go to his room, she asked him to turn around and give her his coat. He did. She took it and looked at it. You were playing solitaire, weren’t you? She turned around the coat and showed the shredded strips down its back.
Funny this phrase “playing Solitaire with the devil” revived a memory I didn’t recall of my dad anxiously watching the clock Saturday night as he played solitaire. He never went past 11. When in the community hall, when there was a euchre night, every trace had to be away by midnight Saturday. People may still be tipsy, and the barrel may be full of plastic cups, but the cleanup of card tables, folding chair evidences were gone and certainly the decks are all away. That’s not a sport for the Lord’s Day. My dad was rare since my grandmother and my aunt and uncle wouldn’t allow a deck of cards in the house, tools of the devil any day of the week to their minds.

He told a few stories, some biographical as well as some traditional.
He lived in a trade community before hydro. Stories thru the cold of winter were entertainment. The hunt was shared. Those who hunted the best, got the least because they could get more. Those who hunted the poorest got the most because they needed it the most.
Those who had gave to those who didn’t, even to the point of families who could not have children were given a child by a woman who could. The birth mother gave a first name. The second mother gave a second name. His Kokum gave two of her boys away to families who could not have their own. She gave away a girl to a family who had only boys. The 4th child was Duncan’s father.
Mercredi told of the changes to Grand Rapids since hydro came and flooded the settlement with the tenfold influx of settlers, linemen and English. Before hydro the settlement was 400 people, undifferentiated. There were white people running the store but they spoke Cree. The children played as equals with the Cree children.
There were traditions such as a father taking his newborn to the river and travelling it together. On new years day you could walk outside and sniff; the world was made of pie. People baked and went door to door in greetings. Children brought pillowcases and were given butter tarts and cakes. Adults told stories, sang songs, gave goodwill handshakes but it was more a challenging trade for the kids, especially the little boys who were greeted by accepting to lipsticky kisses from aunties. Kisses and only the reddest of lipsticks adding up on cheeks as they went from house to house to greet! What a price to pay for sweets, but it was worth it.
As hydro came, the river was dammed. The river’s song left. The tradition of father and child disappeared. The songbirds left for 20 years. The sharing of hunt shifted because now food was a commodity to buy and sell. You sold it to your neighbours who were 4000 not 400. Suddenly they had a brown color and spoke a minority language. The New Year’s Day celebration was displaced by a New Year’s Eve party which left people partied out and too hungover for the next day. His aunt was the last to do a full baking after hydro came and no one came. It is remarkable how quickly a community pivots.
Stories need to be heard or they disappear. Recording in a book is fine but it is alive in a mind, not on a screen, not on a piece of tree, but a tongue, in an imagination.
The retelling allows something to go forward. A reading is a retelling, of sorts. Literacy allows a continuity but that’s more last ditch. I think of China and the traditions that went into denial and were denounced for decades. As soon as the political climate changed, grandparents resuscitated when it was safe, altar gods, Christianity, traditional family stories intact. The Cultural Revolution seemed to erase. It destroyed immense amounts of records but the mind holds what an ideology can’t get to. When safe, memories have a survival instinct. When memories gather, culture can get put back together again, the useful parts salvaged, continuity and larger arc of sense restored. Of course, the Revolution also killed living stories by killing so many people, the living books.
A culture begins again at each birth. A culture ends with each death. It is difficult to contain all of history. We need all our storytellers. And the audience to listen.
The next A B Series events will be March 31 with an afternoon matinee and an evening visual reading with derek beaulieu