Indigenous storyteller returning to Port Moody library this Friday

Standing in front of a microphone, Kung Jaadee noticed the group of children and stopped the presentation. 

Jaadee, an Indigenous storyteller who also goes by the name Roberta Kennedy, has been telling stories across Canada for more than three decades. But roughly 10 years ago, she noticed a group of kids with poor body language and a look of disgust on their faces. 

So Jaadee leaned into the microphone and asked them a series of questions. 

“When I’m done my presentation, I’m going to remove my regalia, my traditional clothing, and put on jeans and a t-shirt. Do you wear jeans and a t-shirt?” 

The children nodded. 

“I’m also going to be hungry and eat a sandwich. Do you eat sandwiches?”

The children nodded again. 

“And tonight, when I get ready for bed, I’m going to brush my teeth and put on pajamas. Do you do these things too?”

Sympathy spread across their faces before Jaadee resumed the performance.  

“All of a sudden I see the light in their eyes change,” she said. “I could tell that’s what they were thinking, ‘she’s a human being, so we can treat her like one.’” 

Later this week, Jaadee will share some of those lessons to Tri-Cities residents on National Indigenous Peoples Day. She is holding a drop-in storytime for youth at the Port Moody Public Library, building off three other performances she’s held at the library in recent years.

She held a virtual talk for the library in 2021 and performed in-person in 2022 for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. Jaadee also visited the library last year for National Indigenous Peoples Day. 

“This biggest thing for me is to remind everyone that we’re human beings, because I have been mistreated in the past,” she said.  

Born and raised in Haida Gwaii, she has also battled racism for years — beginning in grade school, where settler students first started making fun of Jaadee before class.

“In kindergarten, 17 kids surrounded me in an angry circle, and all of those lies that exist today for Indigenous people came out of their mouths and into my ears. And I believed them,” said Jaadee, her Haida name that means ‘Moon Woman.’ 

The routine went on for years: before school, after school, in gym class. None of the teachers did anything to stop the angry group of students.

“By the time I got to high school, I stopped talking completely,” she said. 

By the time her oldest son started kindergarten, in the early 1990s, she gained the courage to talk about her upbringing. One morning, she visited her son’s class with a robe, originally designed by her 86-year-old great grandmother years earlier. 

It was a surprise high school graduation present, Jaadee said. Her great-grandmother worked on it for six months in secret so that one of her eldest grandchildren could have a hand-crafted gift to mark the milestone. 

“When I finished telling the story, his peers reacted positively,” she said. “They looked up at him and said, ‘you are so lucky,’ and my little boy sat up tall with the biggest smile on his face.” 

The moment was especially sweet as there was only one other Indigenous student in his elementary school at the time. But after she shared that story, multiple teachers asked Jaadee to talk more about her Indigenous background with their class.

Eventually, word spread to other schools and school districts. And as of today, Jaadee has given talks in nearly every province and territory in Canada. 

“I wish I kept tabs of how many audiences I performed for, it’s been a lot and I love it. It feels like the stories chose me,” Jaadee said. 

A few weeks removed from tours in Toronto and Kamloops, Jaadee is slated to read from one of her books, Raven’s Feast and Gifts from Raven, sing traditional Haida songs and teach children how to count in Haida at the Port Moody library. 

Jaadee also hopes to teach children about the power of the “spirit world” — ancestors, relatives, and people that are no longer alive but who still care about them. 

It’s an important lesson, she says, because it helps young people realize, at an impressionable age, the idea of unconditional love. 

“Love is the strongest force in our universe,” Jaadee said, “And our world needs more of it.”