‘Everything is alive and has a spirit’ says storyteller Isaac Murdoch

By Rick Garrick

TORONTO — Serpent River storyteller Isaac Murdoch shared stories about the cycles of life, climate change, and magic during the three events he participated in at the Toronto International Storytelling Festival. He shared stories in his Bomgiizhik, Indigenous Storytelling session on May 12 and in the Gala Concert: Stories for Everyone and the Indigenous Storytellers Super-Group events on May 13 and 14.

“When I was growing up, everything was alive, everything is alive and has a spirit and there’s so much beauty and love and there’s so much magic here,” Murdoch says during his Bomgiizhik, Indigenous Storytelling session. “Sometimes when you get older, like my age, when you’re cycling around in your life and you kind of get to be my age, you become furthest away from spirit, and then as I get older I’ll get closer to that.”

Murdoch says it is sometimes easy to forget about the magic and the beauty that’s in everything, the trees, the animals and the fish.

“Sometimes it’s hard to see that and recognize that, and that we’re a guest in their home,” Murdoch says. “I’m old enough to know that when I was younger the Indian agents came and they took us away from our homes — they didn’t want us to know anything because they wanted us to be disconnected. As long as we were disconnected from the Earth, from our own spiritual values, from our stories, from our ceremonies and our language, as long as we were filtered into colonization the lands would be wide open for resource extraction.”

Murdoch says his parents and grandparents always told him not to lose who he was, the stories, the language, the land, and the way of life.

“Hang on to it because that’s medicine to the Earth,” Murdoch says. “So I always thought that one way I could help as a dad, as a member of society, as a human, is to try and hold on to some of these stories that I learned and pass them on. These aren’t my stories, this isn’t my medicine, these stories were passed down from generation to generation with my people.”

Murdoch raised the issue of climate change during the Gala Concert: Stories for Everyone session.

“We know that the sacred laws of the Earth haven’t been honoured — the birds and the animals, the fish are being destroyed, the air and the wind,” Murdoch says. “Everything all over the Earth is being destroyed right now. The old people always said we have to go back and find our original path on this Earth, and that it’s very important to do so.”

Murdoch says the old people said the women are leading the struggle to save the Earth.

“That’s what they say, and I believe that,” Murdoch says. “We all come from this Earth, all of us, everybody is Indigenous to this Earth, we’re all biologically connected to this Earth, everybody, nobody is somehow not. It’s very important that we turn around and pick up what was lost, and that’s why storytelling is so important because they give us reminders of those things that were lost. And we also have to pick up our sound and our voice and use them, that’s very important.”

Murdoch also shared a story from the Elders in his family during the Indigenous Storytellers Super-Group session.

“I like these stories because they remind me of magic, and when you look at the world today, when you’re walking down the street or you’re shopping at Walmart or you’re buying cauliflower or something, it’s almost like we live in a magic-less world,” Murdoch says. “There’s no little people and there’s no Thunderbirds and there’s no serpents and there’s no mermaids, and I think society needs that.”

Information about the Toronto International Storytelling Festival is posted online at: storytellingtoronto.org.