Stories, Seeds, Survivance

Stories are like a secret code, a cultural DNA; they carry keys to life based on our ancestors’ struggles and strengths, their strategies and values. When our cultures and ways of living are attacked in the material world, we keep them strong in our stories, planting them in the hearts and minds of all who hear them, all who will pass them on. Stories connect us to our past and shape our futures, helping us to imagine alternatives, to envision the dreams towards which we can collectively mobilize. Here, storyteller meets storyer as Fidaa Ataya and Dovie Thomason come together to hear, share, and shape stories for this moment. What follows is an edited and abridged version of their spring 2025 conversation.

Dovie Thomason: What do you think, Fidaa, should I just start with a story and then we'll go back and explain it later?

There's one story that was shared with me by a wonderful fellow whom the United States, in one of its rare moments of wisdom, identified as a national treasure by the National Endowment of the Arts. So I need to call up his name because it's important, when we speak, to realize there's always someone behind us who is coming through us. We are seeded, and we are seeds. So Walker Calhoun was the one who first shared this story and its meaning to me. He's of the Eastern Cherokee band, and this is one of his:

It’s said that Frog and Turtle were the strangest of friends. The closest of friends, but the strangest of friends, because they were so different. Frog was very fast, kind of nervous, jumpy. Turtle was slow and careful and deliberate. So they seldom got together. Their ways were so extreme, so different, and yet, their bonds, their hearts, were so strongly connected. It was joyful when they came together.

One day, as he was leaping, Frog saw Turtle over the high grass. He was so excited, “Turtle, Turtle, Turtle!” he said, oh so excited. And he hopped and he hopped, until at last he was by his friend who had barely moved at all. Turtle looked up at him, said: “Frog…good to see you.” And Frog said, “I know, I know, I know, I know. I've got a story, a new story. I got a story for you. Gotta tell you. Guess who I saw! I gotta tell you this. I want to tell you so much. We have to visit. We really need to catch up. It's been too long.” And Turtle said, “...too long. Yeah, let's find a place.” And so Frog leapt in the air and said, “Over there, over there, over there. There's a rock by the water. It's beautiful. It's sunny. Let's go!” So Frog hopped and hopped, and Turtle walked and walked steady until they got to the rock. Together on that rock, they did what friends do: They laughed, they talked, they sang a few songs, they told so many stories, perhaps they talked a bit about those they knew in common and had not seen in too long. They talked about those who had gone before them. They talked of dreams of the future until a cloud moved over where they were sitting.

It seemed as if that cloud was just above the rock, and suddenly it started to rain. First drop came down on Turtle’s face, and he looked up and said, “Think it's gonna rain.” And Frog said, “Rain! Rain! Oh, I don't know if I want to get wet. I could get sick.” And Turtle said, “I know. I could catch a cold. I don't want to catch a cold. I hate it when my nose runs.” And Frog hopped up and into the water, and Turtle went right behind him.

Now that is where that story ends, and all I can tell you is, if you're not laughing, you've missed the point. Children always laugh at this story. Maybe when we grow up, we can grow too up, and we can miss the joy. Mr. Calhoun heard me telling that story one day at a gathering, an outdoor powwow, and it started to rain as I was telling that story. He came up to me afterwards and said, “You know, I told you that story, but I forgot to tell you—you should really never tell that story outdoors if you don't want the rain to come. It's such a tiny story that does such big things, and part of why it does such big things is because we're laughing.” So that story, that's my beginning.

Fidaa Ataya: Shukran. Thank you so much, Dovie. Beautiful. When Dovie shared that story it took me to an experience from my grand mom and grand, grand, grand—our ancestors, in order to call the rain when it's really dry and no plants come up, and everything is really dying. The women and their kids all get together. The women hold the rooster. Then, the women start to press on the rooster, and the rooster calls “cocococo!” And the kids and everyone start laughing, and then they start singing, “يا ربي زخة زخة، يا ربي نقطة نقطة، امطري , وزيدي فوق دار سيدي” (“Ya rabbi zacha zacha, ya rabbi nu’ta nu’ta, amtiri, wa zeedi fou’dar seedi”) The ladies sing it, the kids, and everyone behind each other—as a team, as a group, as a call for God to bring the rain. It’s done in a funny way. They used to wear all types of funny clothes, like big clothes, and they used to put something on their head. And the ladies used to have some seeds and throw them in the air and dance. It's this type of rituals, called التغييث (Taghyeith) in Palestinian language. That was how the women and children used to call the nature for rain. So that's what I remember when you told me that story.

Dovie: Mr. Calhoun just told me that story will call rain. He was one of the great storyers. I often use the word “storyer” instead of “storyteller” because “storyer” sounds sort of like baker, gardener. It emphasizes the verb, the action and interactions of shared stories.

Fidaa: Similar to us, here in Palestine. In my tradition, the woman storyteller, they did not call her a storyteller (Hakawatia). They used to call her her name or “the mother of ___.” History, unfortunately, did not recognize her as a professional. Most of the storytellers, women storytellers in the world, started from within their house. It was just part of their culture. In our culture, it’s just part of everyday life.

Dovie: I grew up in the Southwest, my father’s family being Apache. And when I moved to the East, I started learning the traditions of some of the Indigenous people here, like the Haudenosaunee. They always said that only women can be trusted to keep the seeds because they're thinking “future” in a different way.

You make me think… the stories that I am sharing are seeds from a tree more ancient than me that have been gathered and passed from generation to generation. But when I was learning those stories from these old people, family members and people I've been blessed to know, I was the seed. And now I'm giving out seeds.

Fidaa: In Arabic, we say of someone who's suddenly grown and begun speaking up that there's a seed growing out of them. The seeds are inside us, and you are also a seed. We are trees, and the tree comes out of fruits from the tree. The trees didn't come out of nowhere. But who came first, the seed or the tree?

I wrote in my book about who came first, the story or the society? And I do that exercise with people. I ask them: “Who came first, the story or the society?” Their answer reveals their philosophy in life. For example, the politicians, the states would like to create a story. They want the citizens to know this story, only this story. But if the population or the community came before the story, they create their own story. We are from the roots, from the seeds. It's a very natural way of growing, like a plant.

Dovie: Stories can be used for good or bad, and the intention is really important. Why do we have this tradition of not calling ourselves storytellers, even though we're the ones who carry stories? We're protectors of stories. We're not tellers of stories.

There are conversations ongoing here in the States and globally about who should tell which stories. Should somebody Polish tell Native stories from North America? But the thinking of it is sort of strange: “Who owns the stories?” The question is not who owns the stories, but who is responsible. I was taught the stories come from the land. The stories emerge like seeds. They come in dreams. The land owns the stories, because the Earth is mother to all of us. In that way, the stories come first, but not in that bad way that you're describing.

We live in a time where storytelling has become a weapon. To use words and stories to do harm, to use stories for hatred or division, that's a bad use of a gift that was given to us from the Earth. There are some stories being weaponized. We can't just say stories are good because it depends how you choose to use them.

Fidaa: Stories will create that huge love or that huge hate, and the person who tells the story is responsible for how they tell the story. In Palestine, for example, the people who are occupying us and committing genocide, they are good at storytelling. They tell the story in a good way. This is the time for us Palestinians to focus on storytelling. For example, how we use the words “West Bank.” So maybe everyone says “West Bank,” but we have to stop saying “West Bank.” The “West Bank” is the West Bank of the Jordan River. Jordan River is the natural border between Palestine and Jordan, and the “West Bank” is us. They counted that as us, Palestine. This is disrespectful. This is someone who does not care about the other person. We are something. We have a name, thousands of years old. But people say words without thinking. This is very dangerous. We should be more aware about the words that we use. In Arabic, we call someone who tells stories راوي، راوية (Rawi or Rawia), and the verb is روى، يروي (Rawa). And we use that exact same verb for watering the land.

Dovie: If words and stories are seeds, you have to mind what it is you want to grow. I can't plant beans and get apples, you know? That responsibility is so very important. Sitting here is somebody who people in this country call “Indian,” and, well, this isn’t India. I'm not Indian. I'm not an “American Indian.” My first citizenship would be to the people of my grandmother and her mother and her mother. That's my first relationship. When they started calling us “Native American” my father said, “At least when we were American Indians, we were the noun. Now, being Native Americans, they've just made us some kind of them.”

One thing to remember is one of the first things they did was make our language illegal, our stories illegal. And if we spoke our language or told our stories or practiced our spirituality, we wouldn't get food. That's why stories were kept secretly by the women. The society that colonized here just looked and said, “It's women talking. Look at the woman talking about a turtle. How silly is that woman? Look at the woman talking to the children about birds. Look at these two women talking about seeds.”

This isn't survival; this is survivance. Survival is just staying alive. Survivance is saying we are not just surviving you. We are not victims of you. We are not survivors of you. We are here. We have this much that remains intact, and so much of that is in storying. We are gardening. Storying is gardening. It's feeding the community. It's feeding the future.

Fidaa: In Palestine, we live this injustice, and we say that we tell stories in order to live. We are in the mode of surviving all the time. If we stop telling stories that means that we are dying while we are alive. The only way to exist within the craziness happening right now is to imagine another way. The only thing that can take you there is the story.

Here at the storytelling center in Palestine, we say stories root, strengthen, and heal. Folktales are not just for fun. We can critique other communities or other people through storytelling. This reminds me of a story:

Someone had huge land, a big house, and he needed someone to help invest. He found a person who always said shitty things, everything he spoke, every time he spoke, it was as bad as possible. And the person said, “Okay, I think you are an amazing worker, you are doing incredible work. Can't you control this bad out of your mouth?” 

This person tried to control it but did not succeed.

"Okay, what about this? Hold this stone under your tongue. Try that out.”

And the person held the stone under his tongue. He started thinking before he spoke, because if he wanted to speak, he had to throw the stone out of his mouth.

In Arabic when we want someone to speak up, we say, “Please throw the stone out from your tongue.”

In Palestine, where we are living in very dark times, the only way to survive is through imagination. We can't run away. We are blocked. There are checkpoints. The airport is closed—we don’t even have an airport. You are not allowed to go anywhere or even speak up. But we are still human. We are still alive. Let's just imagine that we are here, existing as an olive tree, with deep roots that will strengthen me—not only me, my community, will allow us to grow and become an olive tree and even have olives, and people can eat and eat and even share it all over the world. So we need this moment of imagination, which allow us to be creative in the situation of genocide. I think this is the only way to survive.

Dovie: Imagination is the key. Sometimes people say make-believe is for children, but to imagine is our most profound gift. It may be what sets us apart from other mammals. We imagine, despite all of this, that an olive tree could be standing strong. And stories are a powerful way to imagine “what if.”

I remember when I was invited to tell stories in Northern Ireland, and the day before I was supposed to tell stories, there was a bombing that killed a number of children. And we came to the site, and we told stories to the survivors and to the children in the hospitals. I remember thinking, What good is this? What good is this? Again, I was in the shelters after Hurricane Katrina, and I remember thinking, What good is this? How does this help? And what it helps is, I think, we were sitting there, and people were holding their children on their laps, and there was laughter, and there was imagination. There was dreaming, it's up to us, all of us right now, to decide how to work together. Telling stories was just what I could bring. The seed finally sprouted in me, in a way that it hadn't. It wasn't a career; it was as a human what I could do for all of us.

Fidaa: The only thing you can do is tell the story. Everyone knows that the truth is naked, and no one wants to hear it. So the story can cover that truth and make it more acceptable for whoever does not like to hear the truth as it is. We have to continue. Because we see so many things in front of us, so many things. If we receive all those things in the body and don't express it or say it out loud, we will be sick. We don't want to be sick. No, we want to speak. We want to say something. We want to dance it. We want to shout it. We want to sing it. We want to cook it. So the idea is to not hold it as a stone under your tongue. The idea is to throw it and keep it rolling because this stone will turn into a story. It's how we can speak now, how we can seed. We are trees, right? And we have seeds.

Dovie: Not long ago, I was in a part of the country that I thought was more conservative, not politically aligned to my thinking, and that there were religions that I don't subscribe to. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, what am I going to say, to these people that doesn't make them throw rocks at me. And I started telling a story about mice because it seemed safe, yet it was a metaphor for everything that's going on. Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize said, “Make it funny… so people will listen.” That's part of our job: make it funny, make it metaphor so people will listen to truth. Make it consumable. Make it nurturing. Make it funny so people will listen, so you can lift your heart while you're doing it. That's what we can do. I’ll still be talking about power, and I'll be talking about survivance, and I'll be talking about love and community.

Fidaa: Please remember that this stone is the same seed that we want everyone to plant and to grow.