Animal First Peoples and the Oral Traditions: an Indian epistemology, ontology and ethics
The Riverbed of the Indigenous First Peoples; Applicable to all of Indigenous North America - Crow, Inuit, Hopi, Navajo, etc.
Topics:
The Place to Start. The Creator and the Animal First Peoples: Salmon, Coyote, Changing Woman, and Burnt Face.
Preparing the world for the coming of the human peoples, overcoming "monsters," embedding the Landscape with Food and Shelter, Teachings and Spiritual Power.
The "HOW" - 'Me'y'mi'y'm - Techniques of Storytelling and Baaéechichiwaau (Frey 1995:147-54) - Responsibilities of story teller and story listener - Outline
Issues of
Translation: Interpreting, and Orality and Literacy (Frey
1995:141-47, 217-31)
Power in Words:
dasshussua (Frey 1995:155-58)
The "WHAT" - Oral Tradition - Lessons Taught:
Miyp
bones - Character Motifs, Values and Teachings:
a. Ethic
of Sharing, Bravery, Humility,
b. Trickster and Ethic of Competition,
c. Quest, Hero, Adoption, and Transformation
(Frey 1995:63-71)
Embedded in the Landscape - story and land
indistinguishable.
Views of the resulting Landscape:
example of the
Niimíipuu
Landscape
there is a dynamic of sharing among and between
all these participants - Té·k’e
- “to give and share [food with
others],”
Story Texts: Coyote, Four Smokes, Burnt Face and Wheel, Sedna
Story Texts: re-membering Salmon, Muskrat Man, Burnt Face, Coyote and the Rock.
Story Texts: Bar Fight and Two Bullets, Viet Cong and Bullets, and Blue Jaying
Hnkhwelkhwlnet bones "our ways of life in the world" - Tamálwit bones "the law" - i.e., ontological principles:
a.
Ashammaléaxia
- unity
there is a unity
and interconnectedness of all participants
- Chnis-teem-ilqwes
- “I am part of all,” -
Ashammaléaxia
-
"as driftwood
lodges,"
(a reality of no dualism, no
estrangement, no concrete silos)
b.
Unshat-qn
- equality
there is an equality among and between all participants -
Unshat-qn
- “eye to eye,”
(a realty of no hierarchy, no dominant subordinate)
c.
Snq-hepi-wes -
a transcendence, a spirit from
horizon to horizon; and
Baaxpée, Súumesh, Wéeyekin
- spiritual life force
the material
world is ultimately derived from the spiritual -
Snq-hepi-wes
- “where the spirit lives, from horizon to horizon,” an animating life
force -
Baaxpée
(that is real is not
reducible to the material forms)
d.
there is the dynamic of empathy and
sharing among and between all these
participants -
Snukwnkhwtskhwts'mi'ls -
"fellow sufferer" and Téek'e
- “to give and share [food with others]”
= focus on dynamics of relationships, and not on objects fixed in time and place
In the HOW and the WHAT = "Transitory intersection of those participating - human,
animal, plant, spirit - anchored to place-based oral
traditions." An unfolding event inclusive of
the many.
Consider the example of a "Rainbow"
and its many participants, or re-consider the transitory acts of storytelling, of
singing, of dancing, of speaking an Indian name, of camas digging, of dip net
fishing and their many participants.
An hierophany - "a shining through of
the sacred" is occurring (Mircea Eliade in "Carry Forth the Stories").
When
the narrative, song, ritual act, dance, regalia, art forms are aligned with the "bones"
of the perennial sacred, a shining through occurs, an hierophany
The Swirling
with Chipmunk and Coyote (Cliff SiJohn).
"If all these Great Stories were Told,
Great
Stories will Come" (Tom Yellowtail)
A transforming,
transitory intersection of those participating.
-
Dine (Navajo) Healing Ceremony (Creation
Narrative and Drypainting)
and Video: Billy Yellow (18 min.; introduced by
anthropologist David Mayberry-Lewis, as part of his Millennium Project, 1992;
aligning the colorful and geometric symbols of the drypainting - sandpainting with
the Hózhó beauty and harmony of the sacred creation time, the oral traditions of
the Yei, the Holy Ones, such as Changing Woman and her children, then of ritually placing the
child that is imbued with the Hocho disease and imbalance into the painting
and the sands place upon the child, removing the Hocho and reinstating
Hózhó and thus health. From the internal
spiritual balance comes an external material healing.
HENCE, in the act of
re-telling Coyote’s story, re-donning
the regalia and re-dancing the dance, re-sitting upon a dry painting, re-using the Eagle Feathers,
re-fishing the Salmon,
re-gathering the Camas,
re-hunting the Deer, or re-singing a
súumesh song, the oral traditions and their sacred symbols also
perpetuate the world,
re-invigorating life-force and meaning back into the landscape and all of its varied beings
- human, fish, animal, plant and rock. The Creation time is
re-traveled, a camas field
re-nurtured, and an illness healed,
re-balanced.
Reality and the oral traditions are
one and the same.
hnkhwelkhwlnet: phenomenal
reality as the
transitory intersection of
those participating (people, animal, spirit, i.e., storyteller,
story participant, story animal peoples), an
event always in the making,
anchored to place-based teachings, the miyp, and in so doing, transforming
that reality.
Reality is
THE Act of
Baaeechichiwaau
- "re-telling one’s own." "Stories make the world,"
they are what is most real. In
re-telling the stories, reality is intensified (not a
"suspending of disbelief" in reality)
– Re-Consider the Blue
of Lake Coeur d'Alene and the re-telling of the Coyote
and the Rock oral tradition, or the
Two Bullets
not penetrating a body when a pouch is worn, or that are drawn from the
body of a young man when prayer of song are properly aligned and given?
– Consider "The Vital Act is the Act of
Participation" Who said this and
what does it mean?? Implications for us all.
Reflect: are there multiple realities, mutually exclusive
of each other, realities we can equally participate in at the same time?
THE FUNCTION and ROLE (Revisit). The oral traditions are
thus at once(Frey 1995:169-76)
:
Does this quintessential statement make sense yet? Can you
restate it in your own words?