My name is Cheryl Potts. My heritage is Alutiiq (Sugpiak) Native, Irish, and Seneca. I grew up in a small fishing village of Kodiak, Alaska
Within my community I am an elder, teacher and storyteller.
I have contributed to the safe return of stolen Alaskan Ancestral bones held for over one hundred years in boxes at the Museum of Man in San Diego CA. Through dreams and intuition, I was shown that some of these Ancestors and Sacred Beings were hidden in the museum without the knowledge of the museum director. I could feel their longing to go home. When this information was validated, they were sent home in a sacred way.
Their return, I was shown, is essential to restoring the balance.
The Ancestor bones are the Earth that the future generations put their feet on.
I teach storytelling by working with dreams, with Ancestral stories, with the invisibles and with participants’ life experiences.
Dreams and stories have guided me to participate in and lead councils to help hold community. This ability to experience the teachings and guidance of the invisible is a source of my storytelling. I help to carry the Blue Flag Dare’, Revisioning Medicine, and 19 Ways Training with Deena Metzger, as well as her annual Healers’ Intensive and Writers’ Intensive.
“Soul Companions” written by Cheryl Potts, published in Dark Matter Women Witnessing.
When I was around 8 years old my great grandmother Dunia came to visit my grandmother in Kodiak. I would walk over to my grandmother’s every day to be with her. She would go out to the back porch where she would pack her corn cob pipe and smoke, I would stand there with her and listen to all she had to say. For the two weeks she was there I hardly left her side.
At night, she would sleep on a mat in the kitchen, where the oil stove warmed the house. I remember she would lay her mat in front of the kitchen sink. I would often sit with my back up against the kitchen cabinets as she would sit in her flower-print nightgown, brushing her long hair and braiding it for the night. I would continue to sit there for hours as she told me stories of a long time ago. She spoke her own unique mixture of Alutiiq and Russian and refused to learn or speak English. I didn’t understand either language, and yet I did. As a child listening, I understood the language of the heart that she was speaking. Although I didn’t remember the stories she told me in those times, I do remember the place of listening.
Those two weeks with my great grandmother Dunia are the foundation of the person I was to become.
In this past year, a book containing the stories and legends gathered from the Elders was published by the Alutiiq People. Reading it, I came to a story that electrified every cell in my body with memory. This is a story my great grandmother told me! I remembered it though I had not known the language. Then I saw that the story had been translated from my great grandmother’s sister Fedosia. As I continued through the book, I recognized that many of the stories came from my great aunt. And I knew these stories. Suddenly, I was the 8-year-old sitting with my back against the cabinets listening to my great grandmother’s voice entering my heart and inserting the stories into my body. The little girl listened to the stories, but the great grandmother took the time to tell them. Did she know how strongly they would live in my heart and bones? Reading on, I realized almost every story in the book had been told to me when I was a child and I had carried them in my heart through all these years. I realized then that I come from a long line of storytellers given the task of carrying the stories of my people. I know the stories. And I am compelled to tell them. And so, a storyteller whose task is to remember is born.
This explains so much in my life and how I became interested in story and how my journey has led me to this land where story is given a place to live.
