Kung Jaadee (Roberta Kennedy) is a Haida singer, storyteller, and drummer. She has performed for hundreds of audiences across Canada and parts of the United States for nearly twenty years at festivals, schools, museums, aboriginal celebrations, and conferences.
She is originally from Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, B.C.) and has most recently lived in Yellowknife, NWT and Winnipeg, Manitoba, where she served as Storyteller-in-Residence at the University of Manitoba Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture. She has worked as a primary school teacher and now performs stories and songs full time.
Kung Jaadee loves dancing, singing, drumming, laughing, eating and she is a true Raven causing mischief wherever she goes in this world. Her stories tell of a time when the animals taught us how to be true haada laas (good people). They were our sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers. We understood them because they already knew the secrets of life.
She prefers to be known by her true Haida name, Kung Jaadee, Woman in the Moon, the personal crest she wears on her button blanket. She was formerly called Kwii-Ge-Ii-Wans, or Big Loved Cloud, her maternal grandmother’s name, but she has now passed that name on to her daughter.
