There is nothing like listening to a good story, hearing firsthand about a personal experience or a tale passed down through generations in a community. On Friday and Saturday evenings, storytellers from the Upper Midwest will share their stories of contact and community, of life-changing events and humorous encounters.
Friday Evening —
Stories of Cultural Contact
Moderator: Rick March
The Minnesota Frontier:
Elaine Wynne grew up in Minnesota, but
her mother spoke only German with her until Elaine started school. Elaine will
share stories from her family’s immigrant experience and from her own
childhood in a community of Scandinavian, German, and Croatian immigrants on
the edge of an Ojibwe reservation (Red Lake).
African-American Internal Migration:
Jeffrey Lewis will tell stories
of his parents and grandparents who participated in the largest internal migration
in the U.S. of blacks from the South to the North, and of his own experiences
living with Mexican immigrants both in California and Oaxaca, Mexico.
Growing Up Deitsch: Raised
in an Amish-Mennonite household with Pennsylvania German as his first language,
Mark Wagler learned stories in his community
about relationships between "unsere leit" (our people) and "Englische
leit" (everybody else who speaks English) and experienced the ambiguities
of living in two worlds. He will share some of these stories and stories of
his own experiences.
Hmong Adapting to a New World:
Mai Zong Vue will share stories about Hmong
culture and her own family who came to Wisconsin from a refugee camp in Thailand.
Hmong refugees first came to this state in 1976, and they are now welcoming
a new group of Hmong immigrants.
Saturday Evening — Community
and Humor in Stories
Moderator: Mark Wagler
Ballads from the Minnesota Iron Range: John Berquist, whose roots are in northern Minnesota, shares dialect songs and stories from this region’s pan-Scandinavian mining communities.
Ojibwe Stories: Earl Otchingwanigan (Nyholm) will tell stories from his community, the Keeweenaw Bay Reservation at Baraga/L’Anse, Michigan. His stories range from moral tales to Indian jokes, and include many traditional tales he learned from his relatives.
Milwaukee in the 1930s and 1940s: Elfriede Haese grew up in the 1930s in one of Milwaukee’s “mixed” neighborhoods of Germans, Italians, and Greeks. Her stories describe a vibrant city of cultural interaction and exchange and the role of Milwaukee’s famous taverns in bringing families and communities together.
Country and Suburbia: Larry Johnson was born into a small rural community of Swedish-American immigrants outside Minneapolis. He tells stories of encounters and changes as he witnesses the transformation of his home “in the jungle” into “a freeway to the mall.”
From the Ozarks to Wisconsin: August Rubrecht grew up in the Ozarks and now lives in northern Wisconsin. His stories about trading livestock and dogs reflect the typical give-and-take found in rural communities.
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