Join us for an Indigenous Storytime with storytelling artisan and educator Alicia Retes.
Inspired by many legends of The Three Sisters - Corn, Bean and Squash, Alicia Retes' engaging Pan-American adaption includes colorful corn husk characters who reveal their Central and South America origins. Three Plant Sisters move into the audience to share their dreams, trials and tribulations of independence, respect, cooperation and community service.
Family oriented program for ages 4 and up. This 45-55 minute program includes an interactive Pan-American Earth song and introduction to playing Indigenous musical instruments.
Sponsored by the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library
About Alicia Retes
Born and raised in San Diego California, Alicia spent her summers in Huatabampo, Sonora, Mexico, a Yoreme (Mayo) ceremonial town, and traveling along the West Coast and across the US to national, state and historic parks. Growing up in a bi-lingual, Mexican-American household sparked her fascination with cultural diversity and natural history. She has lived, traveled and explored the ecosystems and Native cultural arts in California, Mexico, Hawaii, Panama and Australia.
Currently, Alicia is studying her own heritage of Yoreme (Mayo) and Yoeme (Yaqui). Her most recent piece, “Two Bears, Woi Hooso, Dos Osos,” adds a twist of fate to the traditional Yoemem “Two Bears” legend of love, betrayal and redemption. In 2021 she told her version of the story at the Tejas Storytelling Conference, “When Home is Two Nations,” with Tim Tingle, Oklahoma Choctaw teller and author, the Silicon Shakespeare Summer Festival “Folktales from Around the World,” and Indigenous People’s Day at Dominican University in San Rafael. Recent addition to her collection of the corn leaf family are finger puppets also used in her performances of Three Sisters: Corn, Beans, Pumpkin.
Alicia resides in the unceded land of the Coast Miwok in Marin County. The former education director for the Museum of the American Indian in Novato, California, she has provided Indigenous cultural education and natural history tours on land and sea along the Southern and Central California Coast since 2005. Alicia is a member of the Miwok Archeological Preserve of Marin, the Marin American Indian Alliance, the National Storytelling Network, the Storytelling Association of California, and the Sierra Foothill Storytelling Guild.