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Write It On Your Heart: The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller
SHE WAS A YOUNG GRADUATE STUDENT from Nova Scotia. He was an old native 'of the Similkameen Valley. On August 24th, 1977, they met in the sweltering heat of Hedley, B.C. He started telling his stories; she started her Uher reel-to-reel tape recorder rolling.
"I tell stories for 21 hours or more when I get started," he told her, "Kind of hard to believe, but I do, because this (is) my job. I'm a storyteller."
Hundreds of stories later, Wendy Wickwire has transcribed 89-year-old Harry Robinson's stories in Write It On Your Heart: The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller (Theytus $14.95). A long-time rancher and member of the Similkameen Indian band, Harry Robinson devoted much of the latter part of his life to telling and re-telling Okanagan folklore.
"When I become to be six years old," he says, "They begin to tell me and they keep on telling me every once in a while, seems to be right along until 1918. I got enough people to tell me. That's why I know."
"The older I get, (it) seems to come back on me..." he says, "Maybe God thought I should get back and remember so I could tell. Could be. I don't know.
"I like to tell anyone, white people or Indian."
The collaborative book, Write It On Your Heart, is the culmination of Wendy Wickwire's career-long interest in expressing native culture to a broad audience. In the late 1970's she lived in Merritt and Lytton, immersing herself in native culture for a PhD dissertation on Indian song.
"I went to Lytton, to Spences Bridge, to Spuzzum, and all over to get a bigger cross-section of songs. Then I got to spend the whole year in the Nicola Valley, near Merritt, living in a cabin and tripping out to find people to record.
"I would travel around with old cylinder recordings of native singers and try to find people who had known those singers or who could identify those songs. During this Harry kept telling me his stories."
Wickwire eventually married Michael M'Gonigle, an SFU professor of natural resource management, and moved to Vancouver. Last fall the couple co-authored Stein: The Way of the River, a bestselling book on the Stein River valley and its threatened culture. In her warm old Kitsilano home on a sub-zero winter night, Wickwire easily evokes a world in which Harry still waits for her by the bus stop outside his home near Hedley, waiting in his old green Ford pickup truck for her to climb off the bus.
"We'd go out to dinner and he'd tell stories all night. The next day we'd drop around to all of the various places in town, buying groceries at the general store, or sightseeing or something, and I'd make him dinner, and then we'd spend another night telling stories.
"I'd come back and go to a rodeo with him, or go on a car trip, or something, and we'd always have a great time. Hanging out,' we kind of became like a father and daughter."
Eventually Harry needed full-time medical attention for a worsening leg ulcer. Although the prospect of a senior citizens home was threatening to him he went to Pine Acres native senior citizens home near Kelowna, in Westbank.
"It was very sterile. He was used to driving his old pickup truck into town and getting his mail, and having lots of visitors come to his house."
Robinson moved to a senior citizens home in Keremeos -his home base where he could look after himself. Later his condition deteriorated. He now has 24-hour care at Mountain View Manor in Keremeos.
Wickwire first broached the idea of putting Harry Robinson's stories into book form in 1984. 'I'm going to disappear," says Harry Robinson, "and there'll be no more telling stories."-by Ian Robbins
[Spring / BCBW 1989]
"I tell stories for 21 hours or more when I get started," he told her, "Kind of hard to believe, but I do, because this (is) my job. I'm a storyteller."
Hundreds of stories later, Wendy Wickwire has transcribed 89-year-old Harry Robinson's stories in Write It On Your Heart: The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller (Theytus $14.95). A long-time rancher and member of the Similkameen Indian band, Harry Robinson devoted much of the latter part of his life to telling and re-telling Okanagan folklore.
"When I become to be six years old," he says, "They begin to tell me and they keep on telling me every once in a while, seems to be right along until 1918. I got enough people to tell me. That's why I know."
"The older I get, (it) seems to come back on me..." he says, "Maybe God thought I should get back and remember so I could tell. Could be. I don't know.
"I like to tell anyone, white people or Indian."
The collaborative book, Write It On Your Heart, is the culmination of Wendy Wickwire's career-long interest in expressing native culture to a broad audience. In the late 1970's she lived in Merritt and Lytton, immersing herself in native culture for a PhD dissertation on Indian song.
"I went to Lytton, to Spences Bridge, to Spuzzum, and all over to get a bigger cross-section of songs. Then I got to spend the whole year in the Nicola Valley, near Merritt, living in a cabin and tripping out to find people to record.
"I would travel around with old cylinder recordings of native singers and try to find people who had known those singers or who could identify those songs. During this Harry kept telling me his stories."
Wickwire eventually married Michael M'Gonigle, an SFU professor of natural resource management, and moved to Vancouver. Last fall the couple co-authored Stein: The Way of the River, a bestselling book on the Stein River valley and its threatened culture. In her warm old Kitsilano home on a sub-zero winter night, Wickwire easily evokes a world in which Harry still waits for her by the bus stop outside his home near Hedley, waiting in his old green Ford pickup truck for her to climb off the bus.
"We'd go out to dinner and he'd tell stories all night. The next day we'd drop around to all of the various places in town, buying groceries at the general store, or sightseeing or something, and I'd make him dinner, and then we'd spend another night telling stories.
"I'd come back and go to a rodeo with him, or go on a car trip, or something, and we'd always have a great time. Hanging out,' we kind of became like a father and daughter."
Eventually Harry needed full-time medical attention for a worsening leg ulcer. Although the prospect of a senior citizens home was threatening to him he went to Pine Acres native senior citizens home near Kelowna, in Westbank.
"It was very sterile. He was used to driving his old pickup truck into town and getting his mail, and having lots of visitors come to his house."
Robinson moved to a senior citizens home in Keremeos -his home base where he could look after himself. Later his condition deteriorated. He now has 24-hour care at Mountain View Manor in Keremeos.
Wickwire first broached the idea of putting Harry Robinson's stories into book form in 1984. 'I'm going to disappear," says Harry Robinson, "and there'll be no more telling stories."-by Ian Robbins
[Spring / BCBW 1989]
Submitted on December 12, 2003 in By David.
