Wakanyi is a Global Education Specialist, writer, editor, storyteller, and founder of the African Folktales Project. The theme of peaceful, cross-cultural cooperation is a common thread in her writing and personal life. For more than a decade she has lived in 7 countries, on 3 continents, as a global nomad, developing a rich intercultural intelligence built upon her training as a journalist.

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Wakanyi Hoffman

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 WAKANYI HOFFMAN
 is a Global Education Specialist and founder of the African Folktales
 Project. Here, she speaks with
 SARA BUBBER
 about the value of storytelling and passing down wisdom through generations,
 her Kikuyu culture, and how all of us are indigenous people contributing to
 the world.
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 Q: Hello Wakanyi. It is a pleasure to meet with you today. I love listening
 to stories, reading them, and meeting people who tell stories, so I’m very
 happy we are talking.



 WH: Thank you!
 I’m also quite excited to have this conversation with you, Sara.



 Q: In the Heartfulness community, we often talk about the Wisdom Bridge –
 the transfer of wisdom from elders to youth, and from youth to elders,
 because learning is a dual process. It signifies the relationship between
 traditional cultural heritage and wisdom, and the present. What is the
 importance of the Wisdom Bridge from your perspective?



 WH: Wow, that’s a
 really important way of framing it! Off the top of my head, the Wisdom Bridge
 is a rite of passage from one generation to another. It signifies the idea of
 passing the baton from the old to the young, so that they become custodians of
 knowledge, whether that is cultural knowledge, spiritual knowledge, or values.



 Of course, there is reciprocity as well. Children offer wisdom to the old, so
 there is a kind of remembrance for our elders that wisdom is an ongoing
 pursuit, and that they can gather wisdom from the young as much as they can
 gather from their peers. Then, the other way around, elders are passing down
 wisdom to the younger generation, signifying, “It is our task to carry you
 forward.”



 To some degree, I see the Wisdom Bridge as a reminder that we are all
 indigenous to this planet. It is very important to hold that in our hearts, to
 understand that we’re all human beings and our knowledge is ancient. It has
 been growing. It never ended. We tend to put indigenous people to the side and
 have parallel worlds going on. I think it’s important to recall, and to recall
 from each other, that we are all indigenous to our planet.



 For me, the Wisdom Bridge is a symbolic movement of knowledge from one
 generation to another. It is also a symbolic movement from one culture to
 another. That way, we’re not stuck. You can take the wisdom and knowledge that
 has been passed down to you and recreate it, using it to learn about others.
 It is also a bridge to other worlds. There’s a lot there. I see it as a rite
 of passage from one generation to the next, and a way to connect with others
 who do not come from your cultural background.



 It is the gift of elders to the next generation, and it is a way for elders to
 recall who they were when they were younger, receiving that gift from others.
 There’s a whole exchange of knowledge that goes on when that is allowed to
 happen.



 Q: I really like what you said about it being a rite of passage and a gift.
 It’s a wonderful gift! As you said, we often keep indigenous people aside,
 so we are losing out on their wisdom.



 The Wisdom Bridge is creaky and in need of repair. The relationships
 between grandparents and grandchildren, tribes and urban populations, are
 not so strong now. Many of our ancient cultures are either being absorbed
 into modern urban life, or people are moving away from them. So we are
 losing a lot of wisdom from our past. This affects all areas of lifestyle.
 What can we do to save and preserve the bridge that we have?


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 First of all, I want to start on a hopeful note. I’d like to think of this as
 the audacity of hope – we are all human beings, and we are all indigenous to
 this world. Yes, there is a crisis around how much of our old oral traditions
 and cultural knowledge have been passed on, whether it’s to global modern
 culture, or national modern culture. There is definitely a big divide between
 indigenous knowledge and the rest of the world, however, I believe that all
 the knowledge is carried in every generation. Like we started off with the
 idea of the Wisdom Bridge, I believe my mother holds within her heart the
 knowledge of the past. Now she’s living as a modern woman, but that knowledge
 lives somewhere in her.



 It’s less a question of where to find the knowledge, and more an issue of how
 to open up the path; for people to open their hearts to share the knowledge.
 It’s a living thing. And we can recover that knowledge through storytelling.
 Telling stories is something inherently human.



 We all tell stories. You and I are telling stories now, and we’re telling
 stories on social media, and we’re telling stories on the news. We’re telling
 stories with friends when we gather, and when we’re at the supermarket we’re
 telling a story. I believe a story is a living thing, and it lives from one
 person to the next. As soon as we have a conversation, we exchange some form
 of story. You will carry part of my story with you, and I will carry part of
 your story with me. That’s the link.



 We can bring storytelling into classrooms, so that children who no longer live
 in their indigenous communities, or rural communities, where a lot of this
 culture and wisdom is practiced don’t have to lose it. We just shift it to the
 masses.


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<h5 class="has-text-align-center">
 The Wisdom Bridge is a symbolic movement of knowledge from one
 generation to another. It is also a symbolic movement from one
 culture to another.
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 Also, indigenous knowledge and wisdom is not something that is stuck in the
 past. It is not lost; it is living in modern populations. It’s just not being
 utilized in the same way that it was in its indigenous settings. There’s a
 need to recall it from each other. The power of storytelling is such that we
 can recall the past by beginning from where we’re standing.



 If you know a folktale from your own community, that is a way to recall some
 part of your indigenous heritage. The more people are telling stories from the
 past, the more we are recollecting that knowledge and bringing it into the
 present. We don’t necessarily need to move backwards. In fact, that’s what the
 hesitation usually is.



 There is the challenge of how to embrace indigenous cultures in the modern
 world. I think that’s the wrong question to ask. We are all indigenous. We’re
 indigenous to this planet. The question should be, “How do we work together?
 How do we bridge the gap?” One good way is to open up the avenues of
 storytelling, whether it’s digitally, through social media, or orally. Create
 storytelling sessions. In that way, we begin to discover where we have
 deviated, and the cultural values and principles we’re still applying to our
 modern world that are from the indigenous past.



 Don’t forget, also, that indigenous folk have been moving on. They’re not
 stuck in the past. They are using knowledge that they have refined over time.
 Through storytelling and openly wanting to learn about each other, we create
 the space where knowledge is considered as another source of being, rather
 than separate from who we are.



 I think storytelling is the answer to your question. I have realized that we
 are made up of stories; it is our stories that feed us. If we’re able to
 understand that and bring indigenous wisdom into schools, without distorting
 the way knowledge is passed down (usually, orally is the best way to do it)
 then we will regenerate and recollect this wisdom.



 Q: This dialogue is breaking a lot of myths: for example, indigenous people
 are not stuck in the past, we are all indigenous, and we are not separate
 from each other. These are great insights.



 WH: There are
 age-old traditions all over the world. What are the initiatives you are taking
 up in your culture as a storyteller to bring them back, to tap into them, and
 to open things up?



 I’m a Global Education Specialist, and through my research I discovered the UN
 Sustainable Development Goals. I discovered that there’s a lot of talk about
 how to engage children in classrooms to understand and embrace the SDGs, and
 how they can become better-informed global citizens who can find solutions to
 the challenges of achieving these goals.



 But the SDGs are complex for young children. So how can we package them for
 young children who just want to be children? They want to play and learn and
 be happy. They don’t want to be bothered by big ideas about what the world
 looks like, and what the problems of the world are. Take climate change, for
 instance. Even though we’ve seen an amazing movement of children around the
 world protesting for climate justice, there’s still a big question mark around
 how they truly understand the crisis itself. They can understand that there is
 a lot of pollution, there are a lot of fires and earthquakes, but to what
 extent do they understand that this major crisis could signify the end of
 times as we know them?



 As a result of my research, I founded the African Folktales Project. I
 collected African folktales that contain ideas about sustainability, and
 through that process I discovered that all folktales have some lesson or idea
 about the future. A lot of stories are about conflict between humans and
 wildlife, and about climate issues like drought. There are a lot of African
 folktales related to climate change. This was a very exciting discovery for
 me. I realized that storytelling was one of the ways I could bring the
 Sustainable Development Goals to the classroom, so as to help kids understand
 them and get inspired to do something.



 So, I started taking stories tied to the 17 SDGs and reimagining them. For
 example, I have taken a story about a big fire that happened, and how the fire
 was put out and the land was regenerated and recovered. I’ll use the same
 characters, the moral of the story remains, but I reimagine it in the present
 time. Often, folktales are set in the past, so they are not relevant to kids
 growing up in today’s world, especially when you’re telling stories to
 children in modern settings versus indigenous settings. As I tell these
 stories, I ask the children to take them and remake them, recreate them. It is
 that Wisdom Bridge you were talking about initially – passing down stories and
 leaving them incomplete, so they can have ownership of the stories.


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 I’m trying to create an environment in which we can embrace the
 idea that these are our stories 
 – all of us indigenous people on planet Earth.
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 I’m deconstructing the idea of folktales being held by a certain group of
 people. I’m trying to create an environment in which we can embrace the idea
 that these are our stories – all of us indigenous people on planet Earth. I
 don’t discount the fact that the stories came from a certain space, but even
 within an indigenous population there is a clear understanding that stories
 never had an original storyteller anyway. A story was always meant to be
 passed down. When I heard a story from my grandmother, she couldn’t possibly
 tell me where the story originally came from. The objective was for me to take
 the story, use it in my own life, and pass it on to my children. That keeps
 the stories going.



 This is one of the ways I’m trying to promote storytelling, promote indigenous
 wisdom, especially in my country, Kenya, where there is a rich oral tradition
 from indigenous cultures that is not seen any more in classrooms.



 I’ve transformed the stories into podcasts, and next year I will publish a
 book of the first series of UN SDG folktales. I’m trying to use as many forms
 of communication and media as possible – digital, audio, and live sessions in
 schools. These stories can become our stories, not stuck in one space.


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 Even within indigenous communities, there is a concern that children are not
 always told stories by their elders, because of the formalities of going to
 school and the way in which the culture has been separated from formal
 education. So, I’m hoping that these storytelling sessions will also engage
 indigenous elders in the process of recollecting, retelling, and recreating
 their stories. Then we’re all learning from each other, and we’re doing
 something relevant for the times with what we already have.



 I’m trying to bridge and marry cultures through storytelling, using folktales
 as a pedagogical approach to learning more about who we are.


To be continued.

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<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
 Interview by SARA BUBBER Illustrations by SANTANU CHATTERJEE
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We are all indigenous global citizens – part 1

<h4>
 WAKANYI HOFFMAN
 is a Global Education Specialist and founder of the African Folktales
 Project. In part 2 of her interview with
 SARA BUBBER
 from the Heartfulness Institute, Wakanyi shares the value of storytelling,
 passing down wisdom through generations, her Kikuyu culture, and how we are
 all indigenous global citizens.
</h4>

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<h3 class="has-text-align-center">
 We Are All Indigenous Global Citizens – Part
 2
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 Q: A lot of change has taken place from previous times to modern
 times. But
 one thing that really stands out as central in this dialogue is
 storytelling. What is the role of stories in the transfer of wisdom?



 WH: That could be
 another session, couldn’t it? Storytelling is a living thing. It is who we
 are. We tell stories using all forms of communication: Through song, through
 dance, through nonverbal communication, we use the art of storytelling to
 communicate our feelings, our ideas, our fears, and our concerns. And so, the
 role of storytelling in communicating wisdom is central.



 Children are like sponges: They are very good at receiving a story, and then
 interpreting it for themselves and reenacting it. Whenever I hold a
 storytelling session with a group of children, I will hear the story later on
 from another child who was not part of the group, because that story was
 shared. That’s clearly the way we’ve always passed down knowledge. Even in
 schools, whenever I speak to educators, especially teachers involved in global
 citizenship education, every single discipline that children are taught in
 school, whether it is mathematics or science or music or art, is a form of
 storytelling. If children imagine it as a story, there’s a lot more retention;
 that has been scientifically proven.


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 The role of storytelling in passing down wisdom is key to understanding how to
 do it, and there is no one way that is better than another. Take oral
 storytelling – I could claim that stories are best told orally, but that’s
 just one way in which indigenous communities have done it. Now we have other
 tools, and we can use the digital tools we have. We can use any space in which
 human beings are gathering to tell stories. We need to open up our minds to
 what is available to us, and get excited that we can scale the process of
 telling stories with these tools.



 Q: Storytelling has been going on for a long time in oral form.
 We’d like
 to know about the oral traditions of Africa.



 WH: There are so
 many! I think I will focus on my own culture. I come from a tribe known as the
 Kikuyu people of Kenya. The communities of the Kikuyu are based around the
 mountain region. We border the Masai and other tribes, and there’s a lot of
 intermarriage. My maternal grandfather was part Masai, so there’s a bit of
 Masai blood in me.



 Some of the oral traditions are reflective of this intermarriage and
 intercultural exchange, but there are also certain ways of the Kikuyu I can
 speak to, for example, the oral tradition around naming. We name our children
 after ancestors; for example, my name, Wakanyi, is my maternal grandmother’s
 name, and she was named after either her maternal grandmother or paternal
 grandmother. It really depends on the line and the birth order. I’m the last
 born, and the second daughter of my mom. My sister is named after my father’s
 mother. That’s one of the very strict traditions of the Kikuyu culture. You
 know the birth order and you also know if it’s from your mother’s side or your
 father’s side.


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<h5 class="has-text-align-center">
 Our indigenous cultures are so important, and we need to
 honor their
 importance to this world. They provide the map to show us where we’ve
 come from, and where we’re heading.
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 There’s a creation myth: The first Kikuyu that settled around Mount Kenya
 climbed up the mountain. From there, he experienced a spiritual awakening by
 encountering the God of the Kikuyu, and he was presented with a wife. The wife
 then bore nine daughters, and the nine daughters started the Kikuyu’s nine
 tribes. We are all descendants of those nine tribes. Depending on your name
 and your clan, you can trace your ancestors back to one of those daughters.



 There’s also a tradition of building houses, which is an interesting one.
 According to the Kikuyu, a house – a round hut – had to be built in a day.
 That doesn’t happen anymore, but in the olden times, each hut was built from
 morning till evening. A lot of organizing had to go on to complete the task.
 The reason? An incomplete house could invite the wrong kind of energy, evil
 spirits. To avoid them, you had to build your house, move into it immediately,
 and begin living in it. Then you’d have the blessing of the right kind of
 spirits.



 There are a lot of stories around ancestors, and how the ancestors live with
 us, in us, and around us. There’s a lot of respect for ancestors who have
 departed, as well as rules and ideas about how not to upset the ancestors. You
 cannot invoke certain names or people in any old way. You must pay your
 respects to certain people that have passed before you. And the naming culture
 also has a lot to do with respecting those who have left, and showing the
 continuation of life, in a reincarnation kind of way.



 A lot of traditions are still practiced within modern Kikuyu culture, such as
 traditions around marriage. When you get engaged, you go back to your home and
 stay, and perform a ceremony, which is basically a marriage ceremony, before
 you do the formal modern wedding ceremony.


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<h5 class="has-text-align-center">
 We’re all living on the same planet. We are experiencing
 the same
 changes, and the same landscape, on the whole, and we breathe
 the same air. So, I think it is important for us to understand
 that we are called to work together as indigenous citizens of
 this planet.
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 Q: As you were talking, it reminded me so much of the
 similarities in my
 culture, like what you said about naming. In India, the first son in many
 cultures is named after the paternal grandfather. Regarding marriage, you
 cannot marry someone from a certain village because they are your brothers.
 You should marry someone from seven villages away. These traditions are
 still followed – the ones with ancestors that live on, and the rites after
 death, also continue.



 As you were talking, the thought that came that these stories
 are unifying.
 There are so many things that are similar: The folktales are similar, the
 rituals are similar, and we all feel a sort of brotherhood. We resonate with
 each other. The whole circle of storytelling is complete.



 WH: I agree
 completely. Which is why we need to start embracing the idea that we are all
 indigenous to this world. Our indigenous cultures are so important, and we
 need to honor their importance to this world. They provide the map to show us
 where we’ve come from, and where we’re heading. If we ignore this, it’s like
 taking off to sea without a compass. We don’t know where we’re going.



 It’s not to say that we need to be like they used to be, or that they are
 better than us. There’s no “us” and “them.” We’re all one. Like you say, there
 are so many similarities that bring us together. There are more similarities
 than there are differences, and the reason for that is because we have
 originated from the same kind of indigenous populations. The way to bridge
 that gap is to tell our stories. And when we find a point of difference,
 that’s an opportunity to recall a story that might bring about the connection.



 It makes me excited to hear that within Indian cultures there are similarities
 to my own Kikuyu culture. And I know this is true for my own people back in
 Kenya, where there are 50 to 60 tribes. Within those tribes, there are many
 ways in which we are interconnected, but we tend to differentiate ourselves
 based on something as abstract as language. When we overcome the language
 barrier, we discover that we’ve all intermarried.



 We obviously share some of these ideas and ways of being. Ultimately, we’re
 all living on the same planet. We are experiencing the same changes, and the
 same landscape, on the whole, and we breathe the same air. So, I think it is
 important for us to understand that we are called to work together as
 indigenous citizens of this planet.



 Q: I’m so happy to end on the note that stories connect, and we
 are all
 indigenous to this planet. Thank you so much for talking with us today. It
 was wonderful to have you.



 WH: It was my
 pleasure. I hope that we get to talk again sometime soon!


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<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
 Interview by SARA BUBBER Illustrations by SANTANU CHATTERJEE
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Wakanyi Hoffman

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