Shannin Stutzman (Yoncalla), of Hanis Coos and Kalapuya heritage, is a traditional drummer, singer, storyteller, and educator. She performs and demonstrates her cultural traditions in schools and at public events and also coordinates the Indian Education Summer Camp, which her mother, Esther Stutzman, founded in the late 1970s. Stutzman also creates a variety of artwork inspired by her heritage and is enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz.
Bio
Shannin Stutzman, of Kalapuya and Hanis Coos heritage, is enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. A youth educator, drummer, and storyteller, Stutzman, the third of three sisters, was born in Germany, where her father was stationed in the military. The family returned to Oregon not long after and settled back in Coos Bay where Stutzman grew up and learned from elders about drumming, fishing, hunting, preparing traditional first foods such as salmon, deer, and elk. She also learned to pay respect to the land after harvest. "We take a bone or a fin or something like that, and we take it over to the edge off the cliffs. And we would throw it back into the ocean and thank the salmon for feeding us." Her mother taught her how to skin and butcher deer and elk as well as how to tan hides and cook. During her childhood and after, she regularly attended salmon feasts and local powwows with the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw. Those events included pan tribal dance, drum, and song as well as traditional foods. Because these were part of her everyday life, Stutzman assumed that everyone grew up with such traditions. Her mother, renowned educator and traditional storyteller, Esther Stutzman, told her daughters Kalapuya and Hanis Coos stories about legendary figures such as Dark Lady, Snake, Chief Halo, and his son Be-al. Esther Stutzman, who founded the Indian Education Summer Camp, told those stories to the campers, which included her daughters when they were young. “It was a way of teaching without knowing you were being taught and passing down the oral traditions." Shannin Stutzman, who grew up going to the Camp, eventually became a counselor and is now the coordinator. Children from a variety of Native American backgrounds learn about a range of Indigenous traditions as well as how to be respectful of others and the environment. Many of the children who come to these camps do not know their much about their cultures. Through the camp, they find a community that embraces them and provides resources for them to learn about their own indigenous heritage and traditions.
During the late 2010s into the early 2020s, Esther and Shannin Stutzman as well as Aiyanna Brown, Shannin Stutzman’s daughter, have been deeply involved with reviving the sleeping Kalapuya language. With assistance from the late retired high school teacher Paul Stephen McCartney, Sr., whose mission it was to publish a dictionary for the language, and a GoFundMe campaign that Brown organized, the group successfully published a two-volume comprehensive Kalapuya dictionary. Learning is challenging since only a few people speak it in any capacity. There are three different regional dialects, Tualatin, Santiam, and Yoncalla, which reflect three distinct bands of Kalapuya peoples. "The Kalapuya, we don't really know a lot about our traditions because they were lost [with] the treaties of 1855, and we were taken to the reservations." In speaking and documenting the language, Stutzman and her family are revitalizing a part of their culture that had been inaccessible for over fifty years.