In doing this, we hope to honor the traditions of storytelling and the cultures, peoples, knowledges, lands and waters where these stories originate and where they are told and shared today. In this way storytelling helps us reflect on who we are as humans, what we value, whose perspectives and languages matter and how to be in relationship with one one another and with other more-than-human species in the world. As Robin Wall Kimmerer says in her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants, “as the world changes, an immigrant culture must write its own new stories of relationship to place - a new ilbal, but tempered by the wisdom of those who were old on this land long before we came.” (2020, p. 344).

As uninvited guests living and working on the lands of the Coast Salish people in the Seattle area, which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Duwamish, Puyallup, Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations, we acknowledge, learn from, and exist in relationship with Indigenous peoples’ past and present and their stories.

The scope, focus, topic, tone, form, and origins of the stories in this podcast series all vary, showing complex and inequitable conditions and experiences in our communities, how stories circulate or not, and what it means to actively engage with them. In multilingual storytelling and lives, we see the complexities and contradictions that come with aspiring to understand one another while maintaining and preserving knowledge through unique language expressions.

Poet Laureate of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Joy Harjo, speaks about riding the waves of language and acknowledging the force and impact of colonizing languages such as English and Spanish. At the same time, transgression is possible and these languages can become crossing places when we create spaces for coming together. In this podcast series, we make an attempt at riding those waves and open up conversations, through reciprocal sharing and listening, to better understand and be more sensitive to others, our classroom dynamics, and the world we live in.