According to executive director Rose High Bear, the idea for the group started with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. As she worked on the disaster in Alaska and the world watched on, her husband Martin High Bear, Lakota, realised there were other stories that needed to be told. “We started recording at Martin’s urging because he had seen so many elders go home to the spirit world and they didn’t leave their stories behind, they took them with them,” she says.

Since then, Wisdom of the Elders has recorded over 300 audio and video stories of Native people from diverse backgrounds. The organisation has also expanded its services, offering a range of programs and initiatives such as a radio program, monthly television series, storytelling festival, speaker’s bureau, apprenticeship programs in video production and oral storytelling, an online curriculum, and a Wisdom Garden.

Despite the passing of Martin High Bear in 1995, his vision continues to inspire and guide the organisation. With only three people on staff, Wisdom of the Elders relies heavily on consultants, volunteers, and its advisory council.

The organisation believes that Native people need to use media to get their message out for public education. “Our people need healing and reconciliation, so we’ve been working to help our community to heal and grow,” said Rose High Bear. Portland has the ninth largest Native American population in the United States, with around 40,000 inhabitants from 380 tribes, but the poverty rate for Natives in Portland is 35% — triple the rate of the white population.

The policies of termination, assimilation, and relocation drastically changed the region’s Native population. The Multinomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook and others originally made their homes where the Portland Metropolitan Area now stands. In the 1950s, Portland was one of the seven cities where people from other tribes were sent to live during the Indian Relocation Act.

Wisdom of the Elders’ media programs feature stories of people whose roots are deep in the Oregon region, such as Agnes Baker Pilgrim, a member of the Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, who recounts the brutal 19th-century relocation walk of her grandfather yet still offers hope for the new generations. Jackie Thomas, an “un-self-conscious Indian” born of Muckleshoot and Warm Springs Washoe parents, describes the complications involved in getting her children tribally enrolled.

Other stories feature those who came to the Northwest from elsewhere, like Karina Walters, a California born Choctaw professor of Social Work who speaks of the challenges of healing historical trauma, and Toby Joseph, Apache, who describes how he turned his life around, going from alcoholism and addiction to sobriety and a career as a film producer and consultant.

Wisdom of the Elders is using their videos to celebrate Native resilience and address issues of concern to the Native community, such as career development and healing from addictions, diabetes, violence, and historical trauma. The organisation’s Discovering Our Story online curriculum encourages students to view real-life and traditional stories on the site through the lens of storytelling models like The Hero’s Journey, Traps, and Bringing Light into the World. With discussion, writing and other exercises, they are then asked to look at their own lives through the same lens.

The group’s work underscores the need for increased representation and inclusion of indigenous communities in media and public education. By amplifying the voices of Native people and sharing their stories, the organisation is helping to bridge gaps in understanding and awareness of the struggle faced by Native communities in the United States and around the world.

Wisdom has partnered with a variety of organisations in developing the curriculum, including the Native American Rehabilitation Association, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe Health & Human Services in Vancouver, Washington, the Lewis & Clark College’s Indigenous Ways of Knowing Program and other organisations.

An important part of Wisdom’s work is also training the next generation of oral storytellers and media producers. “The storytelling has helped our young people to step out and tell their stories where they might have been timid before,” says High Bear.”

Many of the recorded stories and episodes can be viewed or listened to on WisdomOfTheElders.org.