Ep 5 (bonus): Dzunoqua

This is a special bonus episode. If you haven't heard episode 5 yet about Danielle and the magic trick, go back and listen to that first. Luanne Neal was born in Alert Bay, a tiny island off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. She's from the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation, one of the groups that tells the story of the T'sunekwa. She's an artist of all kinds, jewelry, wood carving, textiles, paintings, and she joins me now from her home in Victoria. Luanne, do you remember how old you were when you were first told the T'sunekwa story and who told it to you?

I believe I was 4 or 5 years old, and I first heard it in our little nursery school, as they used to call them back then, in Alert Bay. And some of the aunties of the community would come and teach and share stories. And they sort of collaborated on telling the story because I guess we were a big enough group that having them sit in front of us across the room and tell bits and pieces of it. And there was something about that when I, in hindsight, look back on that and think, It seemed that much more convincing when you saw 3 aunties recounting and validating this story of the zone qua.

Hmm. And so would they take turns, or like, was it rehearsed? I—

you know what? I don't think they rehearsed. I think one of them started off, and then someone would add a bit from the story, and then the next person, and they'd pause, and the next person. Maybe they did rehearse it. I don't know. But, and maybe it was the tone and how scary they sounded about, you know, I was told this when I was your age. And it just was that much more convincing.

I would imagine as a 4-year-old, this would be absolutely terrifying. Can you tell me what the story was when it was first told to you, like how you heard it?

Sure. So what we were told was that it was really important for children to always listen to and take the guidance and direction of their parents, their older siblings sometimes, aunties, uncles, and grandparents. Because if you didn't and you were being— if you were misbehaving or being naughty or ignoring, or if you wandered away from your home, the main area where you were allowed to play outside, if you wandered away, the dzunukwa might come and scoop you up because she had the ability to make herself invisible.

Hole.

She could just sneak up on you, and you— and she was so quiet in the way she moved through the forest that she could sneak up on you and throw you into this large basket that she had on her back. And this basket was made just for scooping up naughty children. And, and so just the thought of that scared me.

Yeah.

And then they went on to say that, um, if she scooped you up, then you and all the other children in the basket would be taken deep deep into the forest where nobody would be able to find you because nobody knew exactly where her home was, and that she would take you back to her home and she would cook you up for dinner and she would consume you for dinner. And that's what you get for not listening. And Inalert Bay, where we lived, was now I would say probably about 100 feet from the edge of the forest. And I remember when I went to play outside, I would, I would I'd look over at the forest and I'd go the opposite way because I didn't even want to be near, because especially when someone had told one version of the same story about her being able to make herself invisible. The first couple of times we were told that story, that wasn't mentioned. And it may have been my older sister, it may have been the version she heard, but I thought, holy smokes, if she can make herself invisible, she can really creep up on you anywhere. So I'll just give myself the best chance not getting caught. And then I thought, I remember even thinking, I better listen. I better listen to what I'm told.

Yeah. Does the story change depending on which nation is telling it?

I think it's really the storyteller. And sometimes in the different nations, because our territory covers quite a large area and some villages might be much closer to the water than they are to the ocean or to the forest. And like I say, in Alert Bay, We just happen to live right near the edge of the tree line. I think that that influences how the storyteller shares the story, but all the elements are pretty much the same. And it's not a specific sort of a script that is, or the exact same way each time. The whole part of it is to bring out the magic of your own storytelling and tell a convincing story.

When I was doing research on the Tzunukwa, I discovered that there was a version of the story, or maybe an adaptation or a different way of telling it between storytellers, where she can also bring wealth. Is that something you are familiar with?

Yes, and I think that's— there's some really interesting nuances that I've learned since really becoming and training as an artist, because as an artist you have to understand the full scope of legends, and again, each village might have a different variety on the legend. I think it's about the representation of the tsunukwa within our ceremonies that brings about this idea, just like other supernatural beings can bring wealth. So a Thunderbird or a sea monster, supernatural sculpin, a kulus, which is a young thunderbird. So across all of our legends about supernatural beings, and especially those that came to us from the beginning of time and may have well been our first ancestor that transformed from their supernatural state into human beings, which is a lot of our artists talk about that as being parallel with the idea of evolution. So the wealth that comes about is not monetary wealth as we understand it in Western society today. It's the wealth of names and family and places that your family does harvesting or the prerogatives that your family might have. So it brings about that kind of wealth. So It's always really important to make that distinction because I know I've seen it written in some books and the context was taken out of it and the person took the liberty of explaining it as monetary wealth, money, although it can be that as well.

Yeah. You mentioned the story told in ceremony. Can you tell me about the ceremony? There's different versions of it. There's a version with the mask. Can you tell me about the ceremonies?

When the, so the dance itself and the connection to the tsunukwa, certain families have the right to tell that story. And these are rights that go well, well long before contact between First Nations people and Europeans. So this goes right back in our history. And many will say, we'll go back to the beginning of time as we know it. And so the dance and the song reenact the movement. Of Zonakwa and show her characteristics. She's very lethargic. She's this giantess with these large breasts and these pursed lips, and her hair is all unkempt and messy, and she has these huge hands that helps with her scooping up the children. So it's a a dance that even if different families show this dance and some have a slightly different song depending on the family, it's still reenacting her journey and basically who she is and what she does. And that's Junoquá in her female state.

Oh.

But Junoquá could also be male.

Oh.

And again, context. On the male side, the representation, and this is just what I've been told so far is that there's a mask that would be carved for the initiation of a new chief. And so if this tsunakwa is a major part of their box of treasures of that family, then the chief wears a mask that's called kikimf. And that's when you take the word apart, it talks about this being the mask of a chief. So, and in that instance, tsunakwa is male. Now, the interesting part about all of that is when you look at our traditions, gender isn't this binary black and white sort of idea that we see in Western society. Gender, even Our names can be interchanged between male and female. There can be a female version and a male version. Depends on the roles. There's so many variables and factors and contexts that have to be given that it's quite a different one. My Auntie Mary told me, she says, "You know, I just don't understand why people are so fixated on gender." very clear that because everyone was participating and contributing and had names and had a position or a standing within our communities. So to whittle everything down to male or female, she said, that served no purpose.

I haven't seen the Dzunukwa dance in person. I've seen it online. It's always performed really slowly. The person does sort of, I don't know, I only describe it like an air raid siren, woo, kind of a sound. Is that the way that you are familiar with the dance?

I've actually danced it myself. Oh. Yeah, for somebody wasn't able to attend and I had to dance it. So, and I was, the sound I was making was woo, woo. And it was this, it was a sound that went with the hand gesture of scooping children into my basket. Sometimes you only have one singer, but when it's shown within a potlatch that you have a whole— we use a log drum that's about probably about 20 feet long, and there are all singers on both sides of that log, and it's a hollow drum, so all of them are singing. So it just— if you're sitting up in the bleachers, you can feel the vibration of the drum You're surrounded by the sound, and then you've got this incredible image of this mask and this dancer making their way around the fire. And of course, many Big Houses do have modern lights now, but they'll often shut those lights off so that you can experience what it's like to see Juneau qua in the dark with only the light from the middle fire lighting her way.

Oh, wow. And it's like a creepy kind of dance. It is.

It's scary, especially when you've been told that tale as a child. And now I see it as such a metaphor for so many other things in our modern world. It's still a very relevant legend. It's a relevant teaching. And it's a relevant warning to not let your naivete get away with, get too far away, that it's your responsibility responsibility to listen to those who are giving you wisdom and guidance and to put that to use in the ways that they've shown you.

Yeah, I was going to ask if this story matters today.

Yeah, I still really think about it. I can't help but watching the things that are going on south of the border right now. I kept thinking, Tsunukwa, someone's going to come and scoop you. So you have to listen, take heed to the great wisdom and advice that you're being given from others, and don't be foolish and don't think you're too smart to outsmart Tsunekwa, because you might not. Maybe you will, but maybe you won't.

I was interested to see that even though the Tsunekwa story was told mostly northern Vancouver Island, that it was also told on other parts of the island, other parts of BC, but with different names. You know, she was Cannibal Woman or Basket Woman.

Actually, it's not exactly the same. There's lots Lots of similarities along the coast here. So I would say up as far as Alaska, all the way down into probably Oregon at least, the whole, what's considered the Pacific Northwest coast and into the interior of what's now called British Columbia as well. All of them will have a different name, slightly different ways of telling basically the same story. Whether or not tsunakwa is part of their crest system, or families have the same kind of rights or prerogatives to create the mask and create the dance and compose a song, that will be different from each one. But years ago, some friends of mine got together with the Salq art group. The late Linda Bristol was in charge of getting that group together, and we did a work-in-progress play at Edward Milne School in Sooke. And it was a Nuu-chah-nulth, Atsauq, and Kwakwaka'wakw blended version of the legend. And so we sat down, you know, we had elders from each nation advise us, tell their version of the story, and then we adapted it so that they wove into each other. And we had all the kids from the community just play all the parts of the story. No set design, no costumes yet. But we wanted to show that we could take traditions like that and the old stories like that, bring them into an— onto a modern stage, and still share that story in a way that is impactful not only to children, but to adults as well. Because adults also had to understand their responsibility to tell the story. And to utilize the story in a way that was helpful to their children. So we did that and we didn't know the Nuu-chah-nulth word, but one Nuu-chah-nulth who was a fluent speaker said, you know, sometimes my granny used to just call her Ma'as, Ma'as. And in the Tsalk language, they called her Klamoys. And of course, we called her Dzunukwa. So we did this sort of blend and it was fun. And the kids loved it because by then they had already heard the legend many times. And for them to get to be in a little makeup play, be on an actual stage with this great audience, I think it was a really great— it took us somewhere we didn't expect. And the confidence building, the idea of being a storyteller or being an actor was really wonderful for the children. Yeah.

Luanne, I'm not sure how to ask this, so I'm just going to blurt it out. Forgive me if it comes out inelegant. Look, I'm a middle-aged white guy from Nanaimo. My ancestors were settlers. Is it okay for me to be telling the story of Tsunekwa in my podcast?

I take my lead from the last couple of generations of our elders who felt that it was really important to tell our stories publicly so people would understand the incredible richness of our cultures. They always, because they grew up with Kwakwaka'wakw or in these other villages with their respective languages, because they grew up with that language as their first language and English as their second, they were also always very careful to say to us, "But always remember that you have to acknowledge who told you." So when you tell a story, you say, Luanne told me this version, and then you tell exactly the version. Luanne is from Alert Bay, but that, so that's their version. And she said it was okay for me to, so, because we do that in our ceremonies, we do it in, in all that we do, we always acknowledge who taught us. Because, because there are different versions. And if you're out there telling a story like this and you don't acknowledge who shared it with you, it appears that you've taken it without permission. It's appropriation. It's cultural appropriation. And so it's a really fine line distinction, and it's the easiest thing to avoid if you just say, "Here's how it was told to me by so-and-so." And then when it comes to the art, people are always wanting to learn how to carve, and they want to carve masks, and they see that there's a great commercial market out there for these things. This is where we hit the line where it's inappropriate. Because what we've lost connection with in our contemporary society, for lots of different reasons, is that being an artist in our communities and being an artist amongst our people, you didn't just pick it up and do it. You were born into it. You usually came from an artist family. You were apprenticed. Someone mentored you all the way through until you were able to mentor someone yourself. So it's an actual role. It's a right. And we see a lot of people out there just going, I think I can copy that. At least then I can make some money off of it. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

You did mention you were an artist. Can you tell me about your art?

Yes, I was actually a part of a group of young people back in the early '70s who in Victoria, where I went to school, Lekwungen territory, We were actually given lessons in what's called, often called, form line art, which is much more northern art. Salish art is different in that you'll hear a lot of their artists say, "Our designs are not form line." So mine comes from the form line tradition. So, you know, painting and drawing and basics of carving is what we started off with. And over the years, I got into regalia making. So I do a lot of work with textiles and started couple years back, just reteaching myself how to carve. I wanted to learn so many other things. I did jewelry, digital design, went to Emily Carr and learned how to do digital design. So now I just play with everything I can.

Right. You're in Victoria now is your home. You were born and raised in Alert Bay. Do you ever get back?

Yes. Every chance I get. Every chance I get. Usually when there are feasts or potlatches.

That is a long drive.

It's a 5-hour drive to get to the ferry, which will take you another 45 minutes to an hour to get from Port McNeill to Alert Bay.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. It was such a pleasure speaking with you.

Thanks for inviting me to share. Appreciate that.

Luanne Neal is from the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation. Her website is lneelstudio.com. That's l-n-e-e-l studio dot com.