Please join us for the spring quarter installment of Sacred Breath: Writing and Storytelling, presented by the Department of American Indian Studies. This series features Indigenous writers and storytellers at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ - Intellectual House. Storytelling offers a spiritual connection, a sharing of sacred breath. Literature, similarly, preserves human experience and ideals. Both forms are durable and transmit power that teaches us how to live. Both storytelling and reading aloud can impact audiences through the power of presence, allowing for the experience of the transfer of sacred breath as audiences are immersed in the experience of being inside stories and works of literature.

About the Artists
Trevino L. Brings Plenty is a poet, musician, and multi-media video artist who lives, works, and writes in Portland, OR. In 2015, he was The C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship recipient. Trevino is an American and Native American; a Lakota Indian born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, USA. His books include Wakpá Wanáǧi, Ghost River (2015); Real Indian Junk Jewelry (2012); and Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets (2008).

Barbara Lawrence-Piecuch is a Suquamish Tribal Member, a Suquamish Elder, and a Storyteller. She serves on the Suquamish Tribal Higher Education Board, and the Suquamish Tribal Elders Council as the Chairwoman of the Elders Council. She holds a BA from The Evergreen State College and an MBA in Sustainable Business from Bainbridge Graduate Institute / Pinchot University, (now Presidio Graduate School).  Barbara uses traditional storytelling as a form of teaching with all ages from preschoolers to adults. She was raised on the Suquamish Port Madison Indian Reservation, where she continues to live and work.

Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of eight books and pamphlets of poetry including Language Arts (Wave Books, 2014) Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010), Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008) and two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003 and 2005). He has taught poetry at St. Mary's College, Naropa University, Institute of American Indian Arts and University Press Books. His new collection Royals is forthcoming from Wave books in Fall 2017. He lives in San Francisco.