Thank-You Warm Springs!

This July, people from the Warm Springs Indian Reservation and nearby communities came to StoryCorps’ MobileBooth to record their stories and conversations.

We’ve heard from children and elders, cowboys, cowgirls, and ranchers, firemen, teachers, and writers. We’ve heard stories about corralling wild horses and picking huckleberries, stories of journeys and of coming home, of struggles and reconciliation.

HERE ARE YOUR PHOTOS: Feel free to visit StoryCorps’ Flickr album to download and print your portrait, or email your link to anyone you’d like.

Some of these stories will be aired on KWSO, and all will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

From the StoryCorps team: THANK YOU! It has been a pleasure and an honor to hear your stories.

A special thanks goes to our hosts, KWSO and the Warm Springs Fire and Safety Department, as well as our community partners, the Art Adventure Gallery, the Des Chutes County Historical Society, the Jefferson County Historical Society, the Jefferson County Library, Kah-Nee-Ta Resort and Casino, the Latino Community Association, Madras High School, Madras Senior Center, the Tribal Youth Program, the Warm Springs Community Action Team, and the Warm Springs Senior Center.

Person to Person in Warm Springs, OR

On July 8^th, StoryCorps began a new year of the Mobile Tour with its Opening Day in Warm Springs, OR–its first stop on a Native American reservation. The reservation, created in an 1855 treaty, is a confederation of the Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute tribes (the latter joined the confederation 1879). In Warm Springs, we partnered with KWSO 91.9 FM Warm Springs Radio, the tribal radio station, with the Warm Springs Fire and Safety Department as our site host. Between fighting range and structure fires, the cadets and firemen and women would often stop by to check out the MobileBooth.

On Opening Day, Sylvester “Sal” Sahme, Director of Business and Economic Development for the tribes, spoke to his friend Adam Haas. He described having two educations: a formal, “white man’s” education, and a cultural “Indian” education.

During his interview, Sal told Adam that he didn’t learn anything at all about his own history until he went to college at the University of Minnesota–his coursework and political activism there inspired him to research the past of his people, and to ask his elders about their history and their religion, the Washat. He said of his religion, and its parameters of behavior: “A lot of that is almost intrinsic. It’s a given that you’re going to grow up with it and be surrounded by it, but there’s no formal process of educating you in it because you’re immersed in the society and the culture…But it wasn’t until Minnesota that I got to really learn about some things that distinctly affect not only me personally, but our people.”
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Tell Your Story! Tell It Proud!

The moment I walked into the San Francisco LGBTQ Community Center I could see it really lives up to its name. “The Center,” as it’s called by patrons and staff alike, is an inviting multi-level, brightly colored building that’s a hub for events and services to support the city’s diverse Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer community.

On any given day at the Center, patrons can find an impressively vast range of direct services and classes, advocacy organizations, and arts events going on. There’s the Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative; Aguilas, a supportive, culturally sensitive group for gay/bisexual Latinos; Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits, which offers culturally relevant activities for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Native Americans; and the acclaimed San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, just to name a few groups that call the Center home. Their services are an especially critical support to members of the community who, as the Center’s mission states, often experience additional, intersecting forms of discrimination – people of color, transgender, lesbian, and bisexual women, differently-abled people, youth, elders, immigrants, and low-income individuals.
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The Yoshiis

his July Tadashi Yoshii celebrated his 90^th birthday. Joining him in for the festivities were his wife of 63 years, Lily, their three children, the children’s spouses, and their five grandchildren, now all adults too. To honor the milestone their grandfather’s birthday and learn more about Tad and Lily’s lives, two of the Yoshii granddaughters, Sachi Yoshii, 28, and Michi Yoshii, 26, decided to bring their grandparents into the StoryCorps booth in San Francisco for a couple of interviews.

Tadashi Yoshii, with his granddaughter, Michi Yoshii

Tadashi shared many of his favorite family memories with Michi and Sachi, including the birth of his first son, Kenny, and meeting his wife and their grandmother, Lily, at their church in Richmond, CA. Tadashi’s conversation with his granddaughters focused mostly on his experiences during World War II, a painful topic, and one about which neither he nor Lily had shared much with the family’s younger generations. Tadashi, or “Tad”, as his family calls him, was originally from Oakland, CA, where the Yoshiis were part of a large and vibrant Japanese American community. Growing up, he said, his parents tirelessly worked around the clock to run their family’s restaurant. The start of World War II changed everything. Tadashi was 20 years old when their family, along with thousands of other Japanese American families, was forced to leave their business and almost all of their possessions behind to be interned away from the West Coast, labeled as potential “domestic threats” in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks. In all, over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes during that time.
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Touching Lives in Atlanta’s Communities

On Tuesday, June 21, 2011, StoryCorps Atlanta headed into the heart of downtown Atlanta to record at The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. The recordings, an effort on behalf of the Foundation to collect stories from some of its veteran staff, donors, and participants in its Neighborhood Fund and AIDS Partnership Fund, were inspiring and heartfelt.

Arlene Parker Goldson and her friend Mattice Haynes, talked about how they got involved with The Community Foundation and the work they do as community coaches. They work one on one with community residents and grassroots leaders on various community-based projects that are funded by the Neighborhood Fund. Arlene and Mattice not only shared what they are able to help communities achieve, but also what they learn from the communities and individuals with whom they work. For Arlene, one of the things about which she is happiest is that she gets to meet so many people. “I mean great spirit, great energy, great passion. So, I’ve met so many people who don’t mirror me–because I don’t think you grow that way–but give me an opportunity to grow and stretch.”

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Coming to America

Immigration has been all over the news, especially here in Georgia, but it’s not every day that we hear the voices of immigrant sharing their own stories. On May 24, StoryCorps Atlanta hosted a public listening event at the Auburn Avenue Research Library to share the stories of Atlantans who immigrated to the United States.

A number of StoryCorps alumni were invited to share their stories and to talk about why they came to StoryCorps. (Use the links to listen to their stories online.)

Theresa Nguyen came to the United States after the fall of Saigon. She and her daughter, Stephanie, described how the intimate conversation they had at StoryCorps has helped bring them closer.

Sara Takele fled her home country of Ethiopia decades ago. She has spent more than twenty years now navigating this country, not only as an immigrant, but as the mother of a special-needs son. After playing her story, Sara explained she thinks it’s important to speak out as a mother of a son with autism. (more…)

New Thought Teaching Grounded in Faith

On Saturday, June 11, 2011, StoryCorps Atlanta facilitators set up for a day of recording at Hillside International Chapel and Truth Center in southwest Atlanta. As with our first experience with Hillside in December 2010, Reverend Sedrick Gardner, worked with StoryCorps staff to organize a phenomenal recording day. This time, among the participants was Hillside Founder and Chief Executive Officer Bishop Barbara Lewis King. Reverend Sedrick happily served as her conversation partner so that she could record her story.

Born and raised in Houston, TX, Bishop Barbara Lewis King (above), or “Dr. Barbara” as she is lovingly called by her parishioners, will tell anyone that the road she traveled along life’s journey has been paved with faith. Her parents divorced when she was a baby. At eight days old, her paternal grandmother took her and raised her as if she were her own child. Her grandmother was a dressmaker and worked for some of the wealthiest families in Houston. However, when times got rough, as they sometimes did, young Barbara watched as her grandmother leaned on her unshakable faith. She would see her grandmother move around their small home and talk to God. On one occasion, when food was particularly low and the rent was due, she heard her grandmother say, “God, now I know you didn’t give me this little girl for us to starve.” Within the week, her grandmother had enough sewing to pay the rent and to buy food.
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What’s a Senior, Anyway?

The 2011 Summer National Senior Games came to Houston, TX, last month, and thanks to Humana, StoryCorps Door-to-Door recorded the stories of athletes, caregivers, and the Houston community for ten days. In a MobileBooth parked at the George R. Brown Convention Center, the term senior was redefined. We met 93-year-old triathletes and 70-year-old competitors who began their sports at age 60. The Summer National Senior Games are open to adults, age 50 and up, who qualify for their sports in the States and Canada. Several athletes stopped by to share their stories after seeing the Booth parked near the Athlete Village, and we were excited when Patsy Lillehei was one of them (pictured in the first slide below).

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