'The backbone of our communities': 'The Aunties' gathers local storytellers to weave an oral tapestry of their cultures

The aunties hold the hearts of the stories.

Santa Fe’s Lensic Performing Arts Center will host “The Aunties: Women of the White Shell Water Place” in a performance of storytelling, music and the arts on Wednesday, Jan. 24.

The show stars three women telling stories of their lives, including Nora Naranjo Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo), Deborah Taffa (Laguna Pueblo) and Laura Tohe (Diné, Sleepy Rock People Clan).

The women will weave an oral tapestry of their cultures extending beyond tribal creation stories, said director Kendra Potter (Lummi).

“It’s an evening of contemporary storytelling,” she said. “Each of the women have been given approximately 30 minutes. They’ve been given an opportunity to share whatever they want from their community.”

It all started in Olympia, Washington, the home of executive producer Andre Bouchard (Kootenai/Ojibwe/Pend d’Oreille/Salish).

Santa Fe marks its second iteration; it next moves to St. Paul, Minnesota, then back to Olympia, incorporating Native women from each community.

'The backbone of our communities': 'The Aunties' gathers local storytellers to weave an oral tapestry of their cultures

“My hope is that everywhere we go, we’re celebrating not only people who live in the ancestral area but people outside it,” Potter said. “Native American women are the backbone of our communities.”

The women were chosen by their communities.

Naranjo Morse is a Native American artist and poet. Her most recent body of work consists of recycled materials. Working with wire, plastic and other discarded objects, she is forging a new direction in her work. Although known for her ceramics, these new forms express her distinctive aesthetic. The ephemeral installation “Always Becoming,” made of clays, packed earth, wood and stone can be seen at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Taffa is the director of the master’s of fine arts creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Winner of the PEN Jean Stein grant, her memoir “Whiskey Tender” is due to be released by Harper Collins in February. Her writing can be found in Salon, The Best of Brevity, the Boston Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Best American series and more.

Tohe is the current Navajo Nation poet laureate. The daughter of a Navajo Code Talker, she is a librettist and award-winning poet, and has written three books of poetry, edited an anthology of Native women writers and wrote an oral history book on the Navajo Code Talkers. Her commissioned librettos “Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio” world premiered with the Phoenix Symphony and “Nahasdzáán in the Glittering World” was performed in France in 2019 and 2021. She is a professor emerita with distinction from Arizona State University.