Ed Edmo, a nationally acclaimed storyteller, actor, writer, director, and poet—and most of all an Indian—is often heard to state, in his best storyteller voice, “I am a River Indian, I eat salmon-eye soup!” Born in Owyhee, Nevada, a part of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, Ed Edmo’s family moved to Celilo Falls shortly after his birth. He spent his early youth living along the Columbia River in the Celilo Village, a stone’s throw from the legendary falls. He remembers with fondness watching the fishermen dip the long poles into the foaming water and, with muscles straining, raise the nets filled with salmon to the fishing platforms. His playground was the hills behind his home and the river beyond his front door. Ed also remembers the day the falls were overwhelmed and drowned by the waters of the dam. He tells the story of how his father took him out of school that early spring morning in 1957 and how he stood on the highway holding his father’s hand and watched as the water covered the falls. “I couldn’t believe it, it hurt my heart,” is how he describes that memory of his life and his community’s past.

Ken Kesey, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, described his long-time friend this way: “Ed Edmo has much medicine and magic.” Ed’s medicine and magic comes in the form of stories told from his heart about the sadness and the joy that has been his life as an Indian. Through his irreverent take on the world he shares a mirror that reflects the often harsh and unkind treatment of Native Americans by society, but always with a giggle he reminds us of the hope that he carries in his heart for reconciliation.

Ed the actor has traveled throughout the world, from Sri Lanka to Jordan and Tunisia, and then back to the U. S., performing in Kesey’s Children of the Raven. He has performed in his own original play, Through Coyote’s Eyes, and gifts his audience with fall-on-the-floor funny stories of five historical Indian men. He shifts with ease from the old man to the military scout, and evokes sympathy for the relocation of the 1950s Indian man as he is forced from his place of birth. Fred the Wino makes an appearance, as well as Alby the Indian Fisherman. In another of Ed’s original one-man shows, he is Grandma Chokecherry, and as she walks on stage she begins to tell the story of the Indian Boarding School through the eyes of a small Indian woman—and you begin to cry. She is dressed in a plain cotton dress and her sadness is tempered with her happy laugh that she hides behind her hand.

Ed is a gifted entertainer, but more importantly, he is a family man who calls Portland, Oregon, his home. He lives with his wife of almost forty years, Carol, and enjoys his most favored role—that of father and grandfather. Ed and his wife have two children, a daughter and a son. His children are grown and living on their own but the ties that bind his family are strong, and there isn’t a day that goes by that he doesn’t drive his granddaughter to school. When he and his wife, Carol, adopted their son, Ed recognized the need for a guide for Indian parenting. So he sat down and wrote one. The manual, Positive Indian Parenting, is used as the primary resource on Indian parenting for the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA).

Ed creates art by telling the unvarnished and sometimes hurtful truths of his life. But like Grandma Chokecherry, his irreverent and biting humor, coupled with his unflagging hope, are all a part of the message that Ed Edmo shares with his theater-going audiences and in his book of poems, These Few Words of Mine.