PTFW Youth Retreat Podcast #1

The podcast episode features Aiden Davis and Kellen Turnell discussing their experiences at the Native Youth Leadership Wellness Retreat. They talk about the importance of finding one's authentic voice and passion, as well as the significance of self-care. Kellen also shares about his role in the play "According to Coyote" and its purpose in showcasing Native American stories. They emphasize the value of preparation and confidence in achieving success and a fulfilling life. Welcome to Showwater Bay. This is Pulling Together for Wellness Podcast. My name is Aiden Davis. My tribal affiliation is Showwater Bay, also known as Talise Hutuk. Talise meaning strong, Hutuk meaning run, jump, hurry, or deer, translating to strong deer. My pronouns are he, him. Our very first episode here at the Native Youth Leadership Wellness Retreat. And the last day I learned what it truly means to be a part of a healthy community and really just expressing yourself through emotion and connecting with your body. And sitting here beside me is Kellen Turnell, my new Nimiipuu uncle. My new Nimiipuu uncle, Kellen, has came all the way to Showwater Bay to help us learn how to utilize our authentic voice and find our passion. He also shared now how he can be good relatives by creating inclusive and safe spaces for our two spirit relatives. Kellen, there's no way I could possibly cover all the amazing things, have done, and have yet to do. Can you tell our listeners about yourself? Thank you so much. My name is Kellen Turnell. I am both of the Nez Perce tribe, as well as a black American. What is the word for a storyteller? I gotta figure that one out. All right, sending me home with some homework already. Storyteller, beadwork artist, a weaver, a visual and performance artist at heart. I am coming this way from the eastern side of Washington State on the traditional homelands of the Spokane people. My tribe itself, the Nimiipuu and or Nez Perce people, our traditional homelands are where you find the intersection of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. If you were to take those three states right where they intersect and draw a large circle around them, that's the traditional homelands of the Nez Perce, extending over to the east into Montana, down into the south, reaching down into what is present-day southern Idaho, and also being great stewards of the Columbia River straight from the inland. So connecting the Clearwater River, the Snake River, down to the Columbia River and over to the coast. So we have a great stretch traditionally that we are able to to pass through and to share and be relative to others. So it's great to be able to continue that tradition here today. And thank you so much for allowing me to introduce myself. No, thank you. Our tribe really appreciates you guys coming out and talking to our youth. And I want to touch on how you said, there's no way. Oh, wait. Oh, man, I missed it. Kellen, yesterday you and Julia explained authentic voice and finding your passion. Can you briefly explain what it means to you? There is also a term, there's also a term in your language you should use. In English, you said, I am prepping myself for something that was beautiful. Oh, yeah, well, definitely. It was really great being able to present alongside Julia today and to share our thoughts and experiences on experience. It was great getting to share yesterday with Julia, sharing our experiences on finding one's authentic voice, and especially finding one's passion. We are both artists. Julia is an amazing, accomplished musician, especially a jazz musician as a vocalist. Yet, she wears so many hats and is so well-studied. And as I mentioned earlier, I have my performance background as well as my visual arts background. And so, yeah, we were both able to find our passions at a young age. I think we both had really great encouragement from our families. I know for me, myself, I was forced to do things by my aunties. My aunties pushed me into things right away. So, like, I didn't have a choice up front. Yet, it turned out to be great in the end because getting to go to different camps, learning different skills, I started to find the things that called to me naturally. And now here I am, a few decades later, and I'm able to really dive down deep into these different arts and different practices. And they bring me a lot of joy. So, really, we were discussing how finding those methods of creation, of expression, and how they bring you joy, really refining your message in that. So, for me specifically, again, as I mentioned, I'm both Black and Mimipu. I come from different worlds. I also am a member of the Two-Spirit family. So, when I create my artwork, I really work on fusing all these different qualities of my experience together and putting them out. And as I share more and more of my work, not only am I creating greater representation for future generations, it's also a way to mark exactly where we are in today. When I look back as an artist, as many of us artists do, we look back in history. We look back to our ancestors, to our parents, to our uncles, to our grandparents, to see what they do, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you start to study that stuff and you're like, oh my gosh, okay, well, this is where they were. This is where this generation was. You go back four generations, that's where they were. And so, I think of that when I create my art. Like, what is it that brings true to me today so that I can mark our current, present-day, internet-connected, you know, city-Indian-slash-whatever-it-is life so that in three to four generations, people can look back and be like, okay, that's where they were at that time. Yeah. Yeah. That's finding my authentic voice and finding the passion in it. And so, then, with that, you're able to create from a really great place. And hopefully, it's creating greater space for others around you. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think art is a—art and music are a big way to find your voice. It's a really good way to express yourself. And like you said, a lot of the stuff that you make will still be here when you're gone. So, you can look back on—or generations past you can look back on what you've made. And I want to ask you, what advice would you give yourself at my age, if any? Woo! Advice is a strong one. I'm like, I don't think I know any better than I did then. I'm just joking. No, I'm playing. Well, dang, this is wild. I guess what's crazy to me, or what stands out to me, is between your age and my age, I'm double your age. So, right now, you've lived your entire lifetime up to this point, right? I have lived two of those, which kind of just boggles my mind when I think about it. Yet, what stands out in that is understanding that you have time to make things happen. You have literally an additional lifetime of what you have right now, only to get to where I am right here. And where I am in my mid-30s, I still have my additional lifetime to get to some of the elders who shared in the room yesterday. You know, people in their 60s, even potentially 70s, that shared their experiences. So, even in this moment where here I am in my 30s, and I can get bogged down by the everyday struggle, I can get bogged down by the expectations I have for my life, I often remind myself, like, technically, Kelly, you're still a baby. You still have a lot of life to live in front of you. And if you think, okay, I have 35, 36 more years of life ahead of me, easy days, you know, of course, creator willing, because we don't know, you know, yet, should or like, if all things go right, and I do have this additional time, well, I can right now in this moment, make a decision to live my life in a new way, or to really focus on something, because in 10 years time, 20 years time, I may be masterful in this thing. And that still gives me another 15 years, like I reached the 35 amount of time, you know, so here's like a 16 year old, like you have so much time in front of you. And you can always really hone in on what you want to be intentional about. And you're barely getting started, which is the cool part. So I don't know that that's necessarily advice. Yep. Yep. You know, really just understanding like, our place in this quote unquote, thing called time. And yeah, with that, just understanding that, that gives you this perspective, like I have so much capacity. I have so much opportunity. I have so much space. I have so much to be grateful for ahead of me. So yeah, I mean, that's, that's what stands out right now. Yeah, totally. I think growing up is obviously I haven't, I only lived half the lifetime you said, but you've done your full lifetime so far, though. Yeah. Yeah. I think for me and you both, we, like you said, we both have a long way until we're elders. What were some, what were some methods of self care you took for, to be where you're at right now? Wow. Self care is, well, I guess, can I throw that back at you? Do you have any like self care practices right here right now that you do? I, I wouldn't say like here in this space or this atmosphere, but definitely alone. Going through a lot. Mostly just split family. So, but I really think for people younger than me, really just the best word of advice I can give you is to don't worry about things out of your control. Things will come naturally. And if you ever feel any sort of way, like I was saying yesterday in the great day we had yesterday with Kellen and everybody here, that a practice my dad showed me and my brother was, if you're ever feeling some sort of way, just go outside and listen. The earth is talking to you. The earth is breathing. So, that's kind of what I'd say. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that, you know. Thank you for opening up and sharing just like a tiny bit of your heart. That's amazing in itself. And it's encouraging also because like, I don't know that I necessarily did that when I was 16 years old. And even thinking of like self care as a term, I didn't become aware of self care until my thirties. You know, so that's why I'm like, well, I wonder about you like right here right now. Like, are there things that you do? Because then when I think back to like my teenage years, like I would kick it with my friends, you know, we would, I don't know, we would just hang out, you know, we'd go on random adventures. I live in the Inland Northwest. So like we would go out to like Coeur d'Alene Lake. I don't know, just do random things outside. Yet here in my, like now that I'm in my thirties, like my, my halfway mark to my elucidation. Now, now that I have like this other sense of what self care, quote unquote, is as a term and like what it can be, how it can show up in one's life. Yeah. Like for me, I love to meditate. I love to do yoga. Yoga is like a big thing for me, mostly because I get to put myself into a set space and in that space, I focus solely on my body and on my movement. Now it's gotten to a point where like when I do my yoga practice where I'm like moving through my different poses and like working through my breath, it feels like it's a rinse for my entire body. Now it's gotten to the point where it like feels like brushing my teeth. Like, you know, like if you ever go a day without brushing your teeth, then you're like, Oh gosh, like I feel kind of icky. You know, that's how I feel when I don't do my yoga practice all the time. I can feel it in my body. So those are major things in self care. Also kicking it with one of my besties, my grandma, that's like ultimate self care. Yeah. Like being around her, my grandpa, and listening to those two banter going back and forth, just like, Oh, Rosemary. Oh, John, like quit doing that. You know, just like listening to my grandparents come back and forth over the craziest things like the best self care from my heart. So yeah, spending time with family, you know, going all the way, like going on hikes, like you're saying, going out into nature. These are major things that, yeah, I do now. Yeah. I didn't necessarily always do them when I was younger. So it's really cool to hear that you already have kind of a connection with the term self care. So, and that you have these practices that you've learned from, from your dad and that you put into play in your life. Yeah. That is spending time with family, especially is a very big part of who we are and what we do. And I also want to touch on that. You're an actor. You are a storyteller. What, what kind of self care do you use to protect those things? And I know one of your many talents is storytelling. Can you tell us a little bit or, or a lot even about John Kaufman's According to Coyote URN? Yeah. The acting thing is, it's fun. It's amazing. You know, I get to step into other worlds and present stories to different audiences all the time. And luckily I received this role of Coyote through the Kaufman family. So John Kaufman himself was a playwright and net first playwright and actor. And he wrote According to Coyote back in the 1980s. He first premiered the show in 1987 at the Kennedy Center of the Arts in Washington, DC. John himself passed away a few years later and his, one of his sisters, Carlotta Kaufman, took on the role and toured it through tribal communities in the Northwest for many years. The show has since been dormant since about the early 2000s. And one of John and Carlotta's nieces, Josephine Keith, who happens to be the sister, the older sister to Julia, one of the presenters that was here yesterday that is mentioned here earlier in the episode. Julia, excuse me, Josephine has a wonderful background in theater and was called to bring a resurgence to her uncle's play and selected me to play the role. So According to Coyote itself is a one-person play. It runs about 50 minutes to 60 minutes long and it follows coyote tales. Coyote being the trickster figure of many native tribes, especially through the plateau where I come from. We have a lot of coyote stories. Okay. Yeah. Coyote plays many roles. Good guy, bad guy, whatever he may be. Exactly. And what comes from coyote stories? Just lots of knowledge. You learn a lot of things from the stories, you know. They teach you a lot. Yeah. I feel a lot of our stories are more designed to teach youth and us younger, kids and teens, how to respect what we're given. And some of them I feel are scare tactics, not to say bad things, but you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of that, you know. And some of it too, even being like learning what not to do by seeing what coyote chooses to do and you're like, dog, that was the wrong choice. You know, like, why would you do that? Or because of that choice, now look at where we are in life. And not all of it is choices. You know, one of my favorite coyote stories has to do with loss, with death, where for his daughter, he was trying to bring her back from the death of the world. And he was told not to look at her, look behind him towards her at any point until he crossed five mountains. And when he was going up that last mountain, it was rainy and slippery and he slipped. And when he slipped and kind of let go of his daughter, he looked back, you know, sliding in mud. It wasn't intentional necessarily based on like one rendition of the story. Of course, there can be many renditions of any story. Yet in that, then it's this thing that's established. Yeah. Now people don't return from death. Like had he completed that mission, we would have had the practice of people returning from death. Yet because this mishap happened, now it's the world that we live in. You know, so it's really what shows up in the play, According to Coyote. It's really working through all these different coyote tales, bringing us back to a world where people are half human, half animal, and helping to share the stories of many tribes. And we get to perform this for people all over. And it's been great to share it. So, yeah. Yeah. Kind of a world of acting. Yeah. Or at least one taste of it. Yeah. So where can we see this? Yo! According to Coyote, it is still making its rounds. We have been primarily in the northwest area. So Oregon, Washington, Idaho. Yet the hope is to get the show out to many different states and hopefully even countries. I don't know how far this podcast is going to reach yet. You know, you help us get the show out there. Definitely hit up Spokane Ensemble Theater. That's Spokane Ensemble Theater dot com. And or you can check out Red Eagle Soaring, which is a native youth theater group based out of Seattle, Washington. They help to co-sponsor the production of the show along with One Heart Film Festival. So, yeah, these three different entities are working to get the show out to greater audiences. Hopefully we can get it to tour to other places. And in the coming weeks itself, we'll get to visit a few more reservations. We'll be at the Spokane Indian Reservation here soon in the fall. I know that we'll be at Washington State University helping to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day there with the production. So, yeah, it's making its way out there. You can even see on Instagram on the Spokane Ensemble Theater Instagram page updates about According to Coyote. And yeah, if you have any interest on bringing the show out to, say, your community or any organization, the schools, you can definitely hit up Spokane Ensemble Theater at Gmail dot com. And the production team will really work with you on scheduling the show so that you can bring it to your specific community. Awesome. Awesome. Before we end this, you said you had a couple of questions for me. Oh, I mean, yeah. Well, OK, so I know that one thing that I didn't hit that you did ask me about was the in a hoist. That was a word that I brought up yesterday in a hoist being like I am preparing myself for something. I'm getting myself ready for something to come in a way which is like, yeah, the the preparation, the training of like, you know, getting oneself ready for something to come. So based off that alone, like this, like how did that resound with you? And like, did that make you think of anything in your life? So, yeah, like preparing oneself, you know, like, you know, like, I don't know, being an athlete, you know. I really think preparing yourself goes a lot with just the simple things of how you sleep and what you eat and how you carry yourself throughout the day. Preparing yourself is more than just waking up in the morning and going to do whatever you want to do. I found, especially with sports, fishing, whatever it may be, coming to ceremonies, the way you carry yourself and the happier you'll be if you carry yourself with confidence, the more confident you'll be. Especially with doing sports such as wrestling, you have to be confident. You have to go out there confident thinking you're going to win. Come in confident to gatherings like this because when you're confident around kids younger than you, they look up to you and they want to be confident like you. I think preparing yourself also just comes with, it can be a lifetime thing. So prepare yourself for life. Make sure you do everything that will, make sure you do anything to benefit you in the long run. So whether it's just making good relations with certain people, hanging out, hanging around certain people, putting yourself in a certain atmosphere is one of the best things for you. And I think as a youth it can be hard to understand. Even for me it's still hard to understand. I'm still trying to figure it out. But like anything, there's ups and downs and rules and stuff you have to follow and you just have to kind of trust the process and let it take you where it takes you. Get me together. Yeah, I'm like, that's a reminder for me even. Trust the process. That's not always the easiest thing to do. So that's why I'm like, alright, you're giving me some good advice here. Well it really is that. It's life. Life isn't necessarily easy, yet the ways that you can work to find ease in your life, that's always something good. And really, that's what I think of with that word I'm talking about. Like in a holistic, I'm preparing myself. Like what am I preparing myself for? I'm working to prepare myself for a good life. I want to be able to provide a good, holistic, well-rounded life for myself where I'm not overworked. Where I get to spend time with my family. Where I have financial freedom. Where I am physically fit so that I can do the things that I enjoy like fishing, hunting, hiking, just dancing, whatever it may be. So what am I preparing myself for? And then as I see these major things out there that I want to do, then I can pull it back and be like, okay, well what are the choices that I'm making? How can I be intentional about the things that I'm doing? And how can I release expectation and trust the process? Because it's not always going to go according to plan. I think one of the best things my father told me, partly from his interviews that I'm talking about, because he doesn't like people much, but it's funny because his job is to work with people. But one of the things that he learned in his background, going and actually fighting for our country, that he learned is everything you do, you walk with a purpose. So everything you do, you give it your all and everything you do has a purpose. So that just comes back to carrying yourself. The more you feel like it has a purpose and the more you walk with a purpose, the better you'll be able to carry yourself. And that's kind of one of the best things he's told me and taught me. And I learned through hardships and struggle growing up, I feel. Yeah, without a doubt. On that note, we're asked to give our socials, so where can we find you? Yeah, you can definitely check me out on Instagram and Facebook at Trnell Original. That's T-R-E-N-N-A-L-O-R-I-G-I-N-A-L. That's both on Instagram and Facebook that you'll see a lot of my artwork. And then, yeah, do stay in the know about According to Coyote by following Spokane Ensemble Theatre. S-P-O-K-A-N-E-N-S-E-M-B-L-E-T-H-E-A-T-R-E. Woo! Alright, got it out there. Spokane Ensemble Theatre. They're also on Instagram and Facebook as well. Yeah, that's the best way to keep in contact with me. On my Instagram, you'll also see links to my website that has updates on my different art and things that I'm doing. Yeah, beyond that, that's me. How about you? Well, how do I follow that up? I've got double the A's. I've got double the things to say. You can find me on Facebook. It's Aiden Davis. A-I-D-E-N. Davis, D-A-V-I-S. And that's pretty much it. Not another crazy big social media following. Yeah, I mean, that's a good thing, though. It's not a major requirement. Please remember to follow the Polling Together for Wellness. You can find them on Instagram and Facebook both. And I guess we'll close it out here. Kellen, we appreciate all the work that you are doing in Indian Country. We are very grateful you took the time to come out and spend time with us. Is there any message you would like to leave youth listening or any of our listeners? Again, I'm inclined to ask you that. And I say that because I get to participate in a lot of youth leadership conferences. And a lot of the times it's adults talking to youth. And it's a great reminder for me always to allow youth to talk to me. So how about you? Are there any messages or major words that you would love the listeners to hear? Yeah, I think as a youth, we all have a responsibility and we all have a purpose. So as long as you find your purpose, and it's pretty easy, honestly, just be a good person every day and it will come to you. That's one thing I've learned. If you ever feel like there is no purpose, there's always a purpose. Everything you do, there's always a purpose. You're put here for a reason. You're brought around the community for a reason. You're brought here to help the community. Everything you do every day has a purpose. So like I touched on before, make sure that you carry yourself with respect, especially while you're executing a purpose or, as I should say, kind of getting off track here. As you're walking the journey. Yeah. As you grow, you'll start to find out certain things. Like I've seen my brother go through so much. He's always been there for me. He acted as a father figure there for me for a long time. Now he took his creativity and turned it into photography. He takes lots of beautiful pictures. And you can do stuff like that too. It's just being patient. Patience is key. I've had to learn how to be patient. I'm still learning how to be patient. I could change that much. A lot of this comes from discipline. Make sure you're disciplined enough to be patient. Sometimes hard lessons learned are the best lessons learned. So if you ever feel like you don't have a purpose because something hard goes on in your life, that's just a really good lesson that you're learning. So that's where I'd like to... Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for that. Yeah. And really, I think of the exact same thing, just like you're saying. I'm like, oftentimes, the hard lessons aren't fun, yet I try to think, I'm like, well, this is happening for my benefit. I don't know what that is right now, yet in the long run, it's helping me to get somewhere else. So yeah, definitely staying patient, staying encouraged in oneself, and understanding that the plot twists in your story are only helping to drive your story to a better place. So thank you for sharing that. Thank you.