Provider Details
Provider: Dovie Thomason
Contact Details
Address
Harrisburg, PA
Teaching Artist
Dovie Thomason is an award-winning storyteller of Native and Scot Traveller descent who has spent nearly forty years weaving the traditional tales she was taught growing up with stories from her own life. Through her storytelling, she shares her culture with listeners of all ages in schools, festivals, museums and libraries around the world. These are the old stories that preserve and share values over the generations to not only delight, but to gently and memorably teach proper lessons about behavior. A former teacher and artist-in-education in several states, she is a strong advocate of using storytelling in families and classrooms to affirm identity and values, as well as enhancing literacy and supporting oral language development from birth throughout life.
Events and Programs Offered
The Trickster, He was Going Along
Trickster stories are part of all Native cultures. The stories of tricksters like Iktomi, Turtle, Raccoon, and Coyote show the similarities and differences among different Native peoples and their stories. (available for scheduling throughout the 2024-2025 school year; start times may be tailored to the…
Program/Event Format:
In School Performance
Art Forms:
Storytelling
Storytelling and Science
Dovie explores how the spirit of inquiry drives both storytellers and scientists to discover and explain the roots of natural phenomena like night and day, lightning and thunder, and the changing of the seasons. Engaging traditional stories blend with observations of the natural world to…
Program/Event Format:
In School Performance
Art Forms:
Storytelling
Stories of the Four Directions
This program offers a sampling of stories from the diverse Native cultures from different regions of North America – these regions are also available individually, for a more focused program of stories: · Northeastern Woodlands includes Iroquois and various Algonquian stories · Southeastern Woodlands includes…
Program/Event Format:
In School Performance
Art Forms:
Storytelling
Native Voices
First told to her by her grandmother, these traditional stories about animals and hero/tricksters provide a clearer understanding of the values and cultures of the diverse First Nations of North America. Whether a talkative Turtle or overbearing Buffalo, the characters face the importance of choices…
Program/Event Format:
In School Performance
Art Forms:
Storytelling
Monsters and Courage
Here are stories of monsters and the brave men, women, and children who overcame them. Although they can be scary, they are always life-affirming and teach how to overcome fear, deal with evil, and look at the “monstrous” mistakes we can all make. (available for…
Program/Event Format:
In School Performance
Art Forms:
Storytelling
Lessons from the Animal People
This program offers an intertribal sampling of the animal stories which often explain the “what” and “why” questions about the Earth and her animal children – why bear hibernates, why rabbit has no tail, etc. They are also used, as all stories are, to teach…
Program/Event Format:
In School Performance
Art Forms:
Storytelling
We Call the Earth Our Mother: Stories of Thanks
Stories of many cultures are the original way the “whys” of the physical world were explained, as science does now. The imagery and values in the stories from Dovie’s Native ancestry pair the “whys” of science with the very contemporary “hows” of living in balance…
Program/Event Format:
In School Performance
Art Forms:
Storytelling