In this workshop the speaker guides participants through the practice of story sourcing, beginning with a set of universally shared personal narratives—first kiss, childhood injury, and how parents met—that are often told to children to build agency and family identity. The speaker then shares a vivid field anecdote from Wambli, South Dakota, describing a medicine person with limited cash who receives $25 from a young Native man for a drum beater, illustrating the cultural role of the medicine person as an interface with the outside world and highlighting a different relationship to money and accumulation. The audience is asked to extract themes and lessons, leading to reflections on the contrast between personal financial obsession (401(k), market forecasts) and a more present‑oriented, non‑accumulative mindset. The speaker emphasizes that stories are works of art that need not be forced with a moral; they can be left for the listener’s interpretation, and the act of questioning the story’s meaning is itself a valuable part of the storytelling process.
Chapters
So we're going to talk about story sourcing today. And what are— I put down here, what are some commonly told stories? What are some commonly told stories? And let me seed the conversation. Do you remember your first kiss? Okay, here's the thing. If you were looking at the panels, Everybody smiled. It's a common story. Your experience, though, was yours. But it's something that if you just say it aloud, people will tend to go like— and they— and two of you looked up into the, you know, and you're like— and then you got the smile on your face because, because it's a memory, uh, And it's, it may not be, it's not necessarily a good memory, but it's a fond memory, if that makes sense. You know, because usually it's like, and I'm, yeah, that didn't go well. You know, it's just like, you know, it's like, but it's fun, right? So that's a common old story, you know, or story that you have. You might add that to your list, first kiss. Let me just give you a couple others because these are kind of hard for folks to just dream up. Um, uh, a story to tell children, your children if you have children, is, uh, a story of your childhood injury. And the other one is interesting that, uh, that is good to tell is how your parents met, and you tell that to your children. The reason why I chose those two stories are stories that are commonly told to children that are resilient. It increases their agency, if those words make sense to you. If they know something about— these are intimate things about their parents and their grandparents, about their family history, their family story, And so those are, those are good common stories to have and to share. So, okay, good. So, um, so let me, let me tell a story. Uh, I love this story. So, um, I was, I was in South Dakota and, uh, with in this little village called Wambli, which means eagle in Lakota. And this little village, it's poor, it's really poor. And there was probably about 8 of us on the front lawn of this, you know, decrepit house. And the medicine person was sitting there in this lawn chair, you know, those lawn chairs, you know, that are— that you sit on that have the steel or the aluminum tubing. And this, you know, the webbing on it and everything. And he's sitting and he's talking to us. And there's like, you know, a few people have notebooks out, like as you would do, you know, taking notes of the medicine person and stuff. I probably had mine out too. And then all of a sudden, we're sitting there and his wife walks out the front door and says, hey, how much money do you have? I need to go to the store, buy some groceries. He opens up his wallet and says, $35. She goes, okay, and she walks back in. And I sat there for a second. I was like, oh. And that's the moment that I realized I was in a story, because I realized that he doesn't have a bank account. He doesn't have money under it, under the, the mattress. He's got 9 kids and has $35 in his pocket, and that's it. And I was like, wow. So in that moment, I was like, wow, this is, this is amazing. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm in the presence of something that I'm not familiar with at all. So I noticed that, and then, then up at the, at, on the street, this old beat-up forest green conversion van pulls up, stops, and this young Native kid gets out of the van, long hair, and he walks up and he has a drum beater. You know, when the Native Americans, they have a drum and they beat a drum. Walks up, it's beated and everything. He goes up to the medicine person, says, 'Hey, Uncle.' Not really his uncle, that's how they call each other, familiar terms. Says, 'Hey, Uncle, I got this beater. Uh, do you— can you— would you buy it? Uh, my, my girlfriend, she's pregnant, you know.' And he's like, 'How much you want for it?' It says $35. And in that moment, again, I'm sitting there going like, whoa. He said, how about $25? I said, sure. So he takes his wallet out, takes $25 out, hands it to the kid. He takes the beater and puts it under his chair and then just keeps talking. Kid goes back to his van. And, uh, and I'll stop the story there. Um, there's a little bit more to it, but I'll stop the story there. I knew I was in a story. I knew that was a story that I was gonna tell. Okay. What's your take from the story? What do you think a theme is? What do you think? What's, what's a learning you got from that story? So here's one that I've heard. He has 9 kids, how irresponsible that is. So I've heard that one too. All right, so let me stop there and give you a story gem. Stories are works of art. Write that down. Stories are works of art. And when I say that, they don't always need your interpretation on top of it. Let the beauty be in the eye of the beholder. So sometimes you want to give the, the, the moral of the story. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. Be conscious of that in stories. Okay, so, uh, let me give you the other part of the story then. Um, when they were walking away, maybe to fill in some of the gap for you, Sean, on this one is, and this is my interpretation, that's why I purposely didn't tell you this part because I wanted to ask the question, what did you take from the story? My take from the story when I was sitting there was, wow, the role of the medicine person always was to be an interface with the outside world. And here are, you know, 15 of us sitting in the front yard. And at the end of the day, chances are we're all going to give him money. Now, he wouldn't ask for money. He wouldn't say, hey, I just gave you a lot of wisdom sitting here on the front lawn, so each of you give me $50. That's not how that works. And there he would have no expectation that anybody would pull out a wallet and give him money. And that's also— that blows my mind, right? But, but that's not there either. But as the role of the medicine person that interfaces with the rest of the world, in a sense, he knows he has a better chance of making ends meet than the kid that just walked up his front front lawn, and that's just the role that they play. So to give you a little bit about that, Shawn, that's, that's a little bit about the culture. The other big takeaway I had from this, my learning from this, was, wow, how much do I value accumulation? Oh, I value that highly, highly, highly, highly. How big is my 401(k)? Do I have enough money? Do I have enough money until I'm dead? Gosh, how's the market going to react in the year 2035 so that we have enough money? And in that moment, and you kind of said it's like, I have no attachment to that. I just have to respond to what's in the universe for me right now. And that was huge for me, too. So those are some, some of the things that I took away from the story. But also be mindful, if I'd given you that interpretation, I wasn't allowing you to have your own. So again, stories are a piece of art.
