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Storytellers
I was taught that our clay is alive. The clay will talk to me and I will listen. Then I will talk to the clay and the clay will listen. Together we create unending stories.

Carol Pecos (Jemez), 1992

Telling stories and working with clay are two traditions that many Southwestern Native American cultures have done for centuries. Today, these two things have merged in the storyteller doll, which usually is a figure surrounded by children. Making pottery and telling stories are family traditions in the Pecos family. The storytellers featured here are by Carol Pecos (Jemez), her daughter Rose Pecos-SunRhodes (Jemez) and Rose's daughter Heather SunRhodes (Jemez/Arapaho). The traditions were passed down to them from Carol's mother, Louisa Toledo (Jemez), who learned from her mother, and so on. Can you think of a tradition in your family that you learned from a parent, who also learned from a parent, and so on?

 

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