By Kiran Singh Sirah

Over the years, I’ve appreciated learning ways people make sense of the world, chart pathways for healing and discovery, for our community. I often reflect on a conversation with an artist from Sierra Leone I met in a Brooklyn restaurant some years ago. Over dinner, he told me that the word for “medicine” in his village back home was “story.”

Just a couple of years ago, Tom Belt, an elder and citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, hosted us at a gathering on top of the Shaconage- “land of the blue smoke,” otherwise known as the Great Smoky Mountains. Mr. Belt talked about stories as the cosmology of his people in a place where his people have told stories for over 12,000 years. And how it took a 1000 miles and 150 years for him to return home.

During the pandemic, I also learned so much about the art of listening from my friend Daniel Kish. Blind from early childhood, Daniel is a world expert on echolocation and famous for developing a technique that uses tongue clicks to produce soundscapes as a way to “see” and understand an environment. He describes it as establishing the knowns within the unknowns, building points of reference, like navigating by the stars and making it into a story. We still talk regularly and share sound clip recordings via WhatsApp to one another when we’re in different places.

Last week, these interactions came to mind as I shared them in detail, with three days leading a series of narrative reflections, conversations, with a community of artists, veterans, healers, creative community storytellers from West Virginia, all gathered to envision the home they too wish to move from imagination to reality.

We walked by the lake, had conversations from morning to late at night, explored stories to preserve, uplift, disrupt, and reimagine to create a world that feels just and inclusive. We even got to play and drum and sing together one night by the firepit. That’s when I looked up at a night sky full of stars, and I thought of my friend and prepared a sound clip to send.

I am grateful to my friends from the Riff Raff Art Collective, its partners, and friends, for providing this space and for trusting me with their hearts and minds, allowing me to facilitate, and for being open also to the uncomfortable alongside the imagined possibilities for what a better, fairer community can look and feel like.

Most of all, I appreciate the chance to share this mutual aid ancient art and practice for our modern world. In the call and response tradition of our blessed ancestors, elders and teachers.

Thanks to the Riff Raff Art Collective, its partners and my West Virginia friends for providing this creative space. I’m also looking forward to returning soon and seeing what unfolds!


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By Kiran Singh Sirah

Final day in O’ahu, Hawai’i, and I am so very grateful for the wonderful connections this week. Every encounter has been greeted with the warm embrace of Aloha, meaningful exchanges, invitations to homes, story sharing, and learning opportunities, for creating a better and fairer future for our world.
 
One beautiful human was the ASL interpreter from Maui, who interpreted my plenary talk this week for the Center for Disability Studies Pac Rim International conference. An incredible woman dedicated to the recovery of both Deaf and non-Deaf communities from the devastating fire that occurred months ago on Maui. As she talked, I could see clearly that her work helping to tell her community's stories, was sacred work.
 
There have been many other “talk story” moments, with disability rights, indigenous justice, and human rights activists, to a meeting a new friend yesterday, Dr. Maya Soertori-Ng, a remarkable peacebuilder, and her dear elder friend, Donna, whom Maya affectionately calls her Hanai mama. My connection with Maya began weeks ago, following an introduction from a mutual friend who suggested we should both meet. Maya suggested a cozy coffee shop that served excellent Kona coffee and matcha lattes, so that’s where we met.
 
Maya graciously gifted me a beautiful purple Lei and some hand-picked bananas from her garden, and I presented her with one of my elephant watercolors. Our conversation covered life, family, community, our late mothers, the places we call home, and the individuals who continue to inspire us.
 
It was only earlier this week, however, that a new friend in O’ahu mentioned, "You do know that’s Barack Obama's sister you’re meeting, right?" … I had no idea! It was undoubtedly a cool connection. But what was more fascinating was learning the scope and impact of her educational, peace, and justice-building work, from Ceeds of Peace, the Peace Studio, and a girls' empowerment sister program she’s cultivating alongside her brother's "My Brother's Keeper" initiative and with the Obama Foundation itself. Our discussion, like many conversations this week touched on "Kapuna" (ancestral and elders' wisdom and teachings), as well as climate justice projects designed to bring hope in today's challenging and troubled world.
 
As I reflect on all these experiences over the coming days, weeks, and months, I will be holding these memories close to my heart. I will cherish them for a lifetime. As a folklorist elder once explained to me, every encounter is a chance to not only give and share what you know- but more importantly, it’s a sacred moment- a gift to receive.
 
 

Yesterday was World Thinking Day, and I'm grateful to my friend Lynnea, t of Girl Scouts of Southern Appalachias, for inviting me to speak to a group of Girl Scouts earning their World Thinking Day badge.
 
Often, we want to make the world better, but can feel powerless, unsure of how or where to begin. What impresses me about the Girl Scouts (and Girl Guides around the world) is their proactive approach—initiating activities, participating in group discussions, and envisioning possibilities for the changes they wish to see.
 
I also had the opportunity to share stories about the sheroes in my own family, particularly my late mother, reflecting on her fearlessness and love for all. I appreciate the thoughtful questions the Girl Scouts had.
 
Earlier this week involved some tough but necessary breaking the silence conversations with many of my global peacebuilding peers. I know maintaining hope can be challenging, especially when we’re witnessing the dismantling of so much historical good work by some not-so-nice individuals globally. Nevertheless, what sustains my hope is the presence of these young emerging leaders in our midst. They’re consistently imagining how to make the world a fairer and better place for everyone.
 
I am also proud to have earned my World Thinking Day badge on the same day they earned theirs! … I have placed it on my sacred shrine—as a reminder to hold onto hope, and thinking, as a crucial starting point for imagining a world that is possible.

Thanks to Girl Scouts and Girl Guides worldwide for your creative and imaginative thought leadership! If the Girl Scouts aren’t giving up, then neither am I.

By Kiran Singh Sirah

It’s been a tough few months for many - due to the injustices and stark inequalities in our world, far and near our homes.
 
I’m reminded however in amongst the broken stories of our world, for those of us who can, we need to cultivate joy, to use our artistry, to help us and others, come alive. Through this, we can help heal, repair, connect, and shift stories for the change we wish to see in the world.
 
Shortly, I'll be returning to West Virginia for a three-day "we need to talk" deep-dive storytelling, arts, and creative changemakers convening I have the pleasure of co-designing and facilitating, which is themed around stories of “home,” what we bring, what brings us joy, and what kind of home we’re imagining for the health and well-being of our community's future.

A topic, as friends will know, that is close to my heart, and core to the essence of storytelling and narrative reflection.

Returning to an idea a friend reminded me of recently when we say we’re in traffic, we have to remember we are the traffic. In the same way, the world isn't separate from us; we are always integral to it.

We don’t come into the world; we emerge from it.

And as inspiring artist-activist Arundhati Roy suggests:

“Another world is not only
possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her
breathing.”

*Photo by Lori Mckinney- 2:00 am at World Culture Festival. The last time I was in West Virginia. When my friend Lori encouraged me to stay up late (which I don't normally do) and join an all-night community jam, to put a bit more play and joy into my work-life balance!

By Kiran Singh Sirah

I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt appreciation to Smithsonian Folklife writer, Eileen Jones and the incredible production team at Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage for capturing the essence of our experiences at this year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
 
For me, storytelling has always been a spiritual practice, a creative outlet that holds immense power. It is not only a means of cultural expression but also a tool for building peace, social justice, community empowerment, and change.
 
I firmly believe that the potential to make a difference through storytelling belongs to all of us. No one person owns it; it is a collective power that we all possess. The two weeks spent on the National Mall will remain an unforgettable experience, one that I will always cherish. I am grateful for the opportunity to continue this important work, collaborating with grassroots communities, philanthropic peacebuilding and humanitarian foundations, and individuals who believe in the transformative and sacred power and potential of storytelling to build social empathy, cross-cultural understanding, peace, equity, and justice.
 
Thank you, Eileen Jones, and the Smithsonian Folklife team, for capturing the essence of our journey and reminding us of the potential we hold within ourselves and in our relationships with each other. Let us continue to use storytelling as a force for good, as a means to create a world that is better for generations to come. Together, we can make a difference. 

Read the Smithsonian Blog  by Eileen Jones 
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Illuminations & Reflections: Storytelling as a Sacred Gift
 
As a participating partner in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Storyteller and Folklorist, Kiran led daily “kitchen table”-style community conversations that explored stories as living expressions of culture, faith, and tradition that help us make meaning as we move through the world. These sessions explored the sacred power of storytelling to build meaning in our lives and peace in the world, the art of sharing stories in service of understanding each other better and celebrating our similarities and differences. Here are the five themed talks Kiran shared. Each one was followed with interactive activities and facilitated conversations.

Over a two-week period, Kiran led around twenty story circle themed conversations around these topics:
 

• Soundscapes and Glimmers: The Stories of Everyday Life- Kiran Singh Sirah, explores easy and engaging paths to being more present and mindful from moment to moment. (Mindfulness-themed talk)
• One World, Many Stories- Kiran Singh Sirah unpacks how different perspectives create value, understanding, and joy in our lives.
• Sacred Stories and Our Natural World- Folklorist Kiran Singh Sirah shows how stories can help us repair our broken relationship with the environment. (Environment-themed talk)
• Every Meal Is a Story- In this kitchen-table style session, folklorist Kiran Singh Sirah explores the importance of foodways in his Sikh faith and in building relationships across cultural contexts. (food and foodways-themed talk)
• Modern Rituals- Across cultures, we activate milestones, actions, and objects to help us remember, honor, forgive, and forget. Folklorist Kiran Singh Sirah will lead this session about incorporating simple, yet rich and meaningful, rituals into our daily lives.

By Kiran Singh Sirah

I come from the Sikh tradition, a faith that many people in the United States don’t know a lot about. While it’s the world’s fifth-largest religion, it’s also a tradition that is often misunderstood here and abroad and especially in India, which is where it originates. Growing up in England in the 1980s and 90s, my father (who wears a traditional Sikh turban) was frequently accused by strangers on the street of being a terrorist. For my entire life, Sikhs being referred to as terrorists has been a racial slur that people sometimes use out of hate, but mostly use out of ignorance and misguided fear. I’m sure you can imagine how the problem escalated in the wake of September 11th.
 
I was born in England. Simran Jeet Singh, a religious scholar who wrote a booked called The Light We Give, is my American counterpart, a Sikh with Punjabi roots who was born and raised in Texas. He has also dealt with a lot of racism and misunderstandings in his life. He wears a turban like my dad’s, and has also been called a terrorist. Singh points out that one of the many ironies of a common taunt he receives – “go back to where you came from” – is that even in India, Sikhs are a minority who have faced genocide and terrible human rights violations against a government that persecutes them. But of course, if he were to go back to where he came from, that would be Texas! It’s a pertinent reminder to not judge a book by its cover.

Another irony layered into this persecution is that the Sikh tradition is all about equality, justice, and unconditional love for everyone – even those who would wrong us. Sikhs are the original social justice warriors. We believe in loving our neighbors, respecting other people’s beliefs, community service, and honoring difference. These values are very holy to us, and we put a lot of emphasis on them, and on the practical matter of how to live up to our values in the course of everyday life. Because we’re human, we don’t always live up to those values. But it’s important to try.

Lately I’ve been reflecting my Sikh roots and beliefs in preparation for my presentations at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C, (taking place June 29 – July 4 and July 6 – 9 on the National Mall. You’re invited!) I’ll be leading daily “kitchen table”-style conversations that explore stories as living expressions of culture, faith, tradition and meaning making. The theme of the festival is living religions. The Sikh faith, like Catholicism and Islam and any number of the world’s religion, isn’t static; it’s always changing over time, and of course varies from region to region or even person to person.

With Sikhs in particular, doctrine isn’t really a big focus. So instead of talking about the theological roots of my Sikh beliefs, which go back hundreds of years, it makes more sense to talk about how these values were passed along to me: as a story. When I was little, my mother taught me something she called “the journey of five.” She described it as a sort of heroic quest where you embrace and learn from five traditions different than your own, at the end of which you fully come into your own as a Sikh. Our journey of five took us to a variety of places and events (Midnight Mass, for instance), and afterwards we’d talk about faith and love and difference. This experience was so real to me that I only recently became aware that this was seemingly my late mother’s idea, and not a traditional Sikh teaching—a perfect example of how “living religions” work within our families and among communities.

My mother’s journey of five has always stayed with me, and perhaps as a result (along with the Sikh tendency to focus on learning and curiosity), I’ve always had an interfaith bent. Early in my career, when I was a teacher in Scotland, I lived just off the Royal Mile. I liked to joke that John Knox, the founder of the Scottish Reformation, was my neighbor because his historic house was actually literally a stone’s throw away. St. Giles Cathedral, the Church where he preached during the Reformation, was a place that I would go to rest and regroup after work. Sometimes I’d sit there for a while—before an antiwar protest, for example—and embrace the beauty of that sacred space. I loved the stillness and the quiet. But I also loved how I could hear the soft sounds of traffic and activity outside. It gave the space a womblike quality that was comforting and affirming, and it was always a good place to collect my thoughts.

The journey of five isn’t just about learning about different religions. It’s about community, places, and experiences. Different ways of life. It’s a form of spiritual travel, not unlike enjoying a trip abroad and experiencing the wonders of new sights and how other people do things. It’s good to go home, but there’s always something to take with you—maybe a newly cultivated appreciation for a food, a new form of greeting, or the memory of a beautiful painting in a museum.

I’m reminded of the time more than two decades ago, just out of school, when I lived in a shared flat. It was a ragtag crew, including writers, poets, artists, travelers—and a little mouse called Simon. We always had a basket with different kinds of bread on the table. Some days the basket was filled with fresh bagels or delicious fresh almond croissants taken from the bakeries where some of my roommates worked along the Royal Mile. Some days the bread was stale and hard, and other days, by the time I got out of bed, there were just multicolored seeds and crumbs. The contents of our breadbasket were unpredictable, much like the household itself. By telling you about it now, you understand more about who I am and where I’ve been. Every story is a new opportunity to share our humanity, even if we do so imperfectly.I try to remember that when I’m confronted with ignorance and hostility toward my own faith, and as I encounter beliefs that are new to me.

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By Kiran Singh Sirah

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about listening. The late storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham, one of the matriarchs of the American storytelling movement, liked to say that storytelling teaches us to listen. Stories can’t exist without at least one listener, after all. One of the things I enjoy most about the events such as the National Storytelling Festival and other similar festivals, is the sheer spectacle of an audience sitting in rapt attention as a single storyteller works. The modern world, with its constant demands on our attention, doesn’t offer many such opportunities these days.
Kiran and Daniel, in Tennessee
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I have learned so much about the art of listening from my friend Daniel Kish. Blind from early childhood, he’s a world expert on echolocation, the process that animals including bats, dolphins, and now humans can use to locate objects by sound. Daniel is famous for developing a technique that uses tongue clicks to produce sounds as a way to “see” and understand an environment. (One expert has described the technique as an “acoustic flashlight.”) Over the years, Daniel has trained both blind and seeing people on his methods.

In a sense, what Daniel is doing is helping people remove their fear of the dark, both literally and metaphorically. He once told me that he likes to begin the training process by “neutralizing fear of the dark unknown.” He wrote, “We essentially remove fear from ourselves and our lives. Life then becomes an intriguing tapestry of puzzles, adventures, and discoveries.”

Many of Daniel’s observations over the years have resonated with me, in part because I know that storytelling contains information that help us navigate and understand the world around us. It’s human nature to fear the unknown, and it can be helpful to have a guide. For blind people, of course, those fears are quite tangible, since the unknown can be present immediate physical danger. Daniel once described echolocation to me as “establishing the knowns within the unknowns, something like navigating by the stars. You chart your way by establishing points of reference, a bit like making it into a story.” Listening can help all of us navigate unfamiliar and even scary situations.

The parallels between Daniel’s work and storytelling have been even more clear to me when he has discussed other methods of navigating unfamiliar environments. Here’s Daniel again, on working with sighted guides during travel:

Blind people typically engage sighted guides to facilitate their safe, effective, and graceful navigation through, interaction with, and understanding of their environment. Insofar as the guiding process necessitates physically guiding the movements of a blind person, it also requires narrative descriptions. Much as a hearing interpreter helps a deaf person interact primarily with the social environment through the interpretation of spoken language, a sighted guide helps a blind person interact primarily with the physical environment by interpreting visual elements through narratives as well as physical guidance.

These narratives aren’t just expository verbiage landing on a blind person’s consciousness like some podcast or radio channel streaming. These narratives are actively captured and processed through what I call a “comprehension matrix,” and ultimately formed into images. In essence, they are coded in the brain as stories, or elements that comprise stories, and rich in substance, character, and information. For a blind person, these narrative stories and story elements help to establish a blind person’s mental construct of the world around them and their relationship to it. For a blind person, physical guidance is typically the key to their interaction with the world, but it’s the narratives and rich exchanges that are the key to a blind person’s understanding.
 
Though Daniel and I initially met a conference where he participated in a workshop I was leading (and I attended one of his talks), we have since become very good friends. He lives across the country, in Long Beach, California, and we occasionally use FaceTime to have long conversations. We were pandemic buddies, which paved the way for his special visit to Appalachia last year. He stayed with me for a week, during which I got to introduce him to our region’s BBQ, my favorite walks and hikes, and my family. Daniel also met with my storytelling colleagues to discuss his work and share his thoughts and ideas.

When he was here, I shared with him the three different routes I take often by car. There’s one that I use when I’m in a hurry, and one that’s good for when I have a bit more time. Finally, there’s the much longer one, my favorite, which winds along country rural roads with no traffic. Daniel encouraged me to try a sort of driving meditation, where I aim to notice something new or surprising on the route. It’s a way to develop focus and pay attention by using sight and sounds. This practice is something I’ve kept up. I know I’m not doing it when my mind is preoccupied or too busy, so the goal is always to get back to paying attention again and remain present in the moment.

Daniel also introduced me to the idea of soundscapes and how they change over time: the sounds of the wind, leaves falling from trees, and noises from humans or animals or cars. We can hear the subtle shifts when we pay close attention. When we went on one of my favorite hikes, along the Appalachian Trail beside Watauga Lake, Daniel helped me notice more of this audio input based on the natural amphitheater that our trail had beside this lake, in the Fall.

Via email, Daniel has shared with me some sound clips of various activities of real-time recordings of chirping birds that he made. I was amazed by how he could describe their movement and the physical location of houses by listening to the sounds that the birds were making.

One time, a bird made its way into his house on accident. He could hear the sound of the bird panicking because it didn’t know how to get out. As it flew back and forth across his living room, he could hear other birds outside, moving in parallel. Daniel said that, as he opened the back door to let the trapped bird out, he noticed a sound from a small flock, like a call and response to help guide the lost bird to the exit.  In another clip, he shared the sounds of some ravens, and described how they moved from tree to tree, how to distinguish between males and females, and the sizes of each. I started making my own recordings of soundscapes, like the bird noise near my dad’s house in England, the sound of coffee percolating, and the sizzle of onions and cumin seeds roasting in my cast iron pan. With thanks to Daniel, I have realized that is actually one of my favorite sounds.

Deep listening is not just a source of information, but also of wonder. Daniel once told me about a time he decided to climb a tree when he was a boy. No one had told him that the sky was far away, so he wanted to try to touch it. As he got further up, it dawned on him that the sky was out of reach. In the branches, listening to the sounds from the ground and across the fields, was when he discovered his love for soundscapes.

I invite you to join me in practicing the art of these many types of listening: to feel informed, to light dark paths, and to inspire wonder and awe.