Anne Jennison - Native American Storyteller

Anne Jennison is a New Hampshire-based traditional Native American storyteller, historian, educator, and craftsperson with both European and Abenaki heritage. With Master’s degrees in both Storytelling and in History, Anne brings a wealth of knowledge - polished by more than 30 years of experience as a performing storyteller - to her retelling of timeless Northeast Woodlands Native American lesson stories. 

Anne is an active public educator. She tells Native American stories and teaches Abenaki History and Culture through her appearances at schools, colleges, powwows, museums, historical societies, and libraries.  Additionally, Anne gives demonstrations of Indigenous art such as bead working, birch bark basket making and cornhusk doll making.

In addition to giving storytelling performances at a variety of venues, Anne works as a consultant for Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she is helping the museum develop an Abenaki history and cultural interpretation program through their Abenaki Heritage Initiative.  

As a professional storyteller Anne chooses to tell only the Northeast Native American lesson stories that reflect the Indigenous part of her heritage.  Anne explains it this way: 

“I first began telling Northeast Woodlands stories when my daughters were quite young, to teach them about their Abenaki and Mohawk heritage. Although we are also descendants of European colonists who came to this continent 400 years ago, this is where we live - not Europe.  My Indigenous ancestors lived here in the Northeast for over 12,000 years. The stories I tell reflect our family's Indigenous heritage and contain important lessons and values that need to be heard every bit as much as - if not more than - the European stories that were preserved by such people as Andrew Lang, Charles Perrault, the Grimm brothers, and Hans Christian Andersen”.

Anne's ongoing professional goal is to educate the public about the Indigenous peoples of the Northeast - both in the past and in the present.  She accomplishes this through sharing Northeastern Native American lesson stories, traditional arts, and history in ways that are culturally accurate, engaging, educational, and warmly entertaining.