Passage III

HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the article “Proceed with Caution: Using Native American Folktales in the Classroom” by Debbie Reese (©2007 by the National Council of Teachers of English).

Traditional stories include myths, legends, and folktales rooted in the oral storytelling traditions of a given people. Through story, people pass their religious beliefs, customs, history, lifestyle, language, values, and the places they hold sacred from one generation to the next. As such, stories and their telling are more than simple entertainment. They matter—in significant ways—to the well-being of the communities from which they originate. Acclaimed Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko writes that the oral narrative, or story, was the medium by which the Pueblo people transmitted “an entire culture, a worldview complete with proven strategies for survival.” In her discussion of hunting stories, she says:

These accounts contained information of critical importance about the behavior and migration patterns of mule deer. Hunting stories carefully described key landmarks and locations of fresh water. Thus, a deer-hunt story might also serve as a map. Lost travelers and lost pinon-nut gatherers have been saved by sighting a rock formation they recognize only because they once heard a hunting story describing this rock formation.

Similarly, children’s book author Joseph Bruchac writes,

... rather than being ‘mere myths,’ with ‘myth’ being used in the pejorative sense of ‘untruth’ those ancient traditional tales were a distillation of the deep knowledge held by the many Native American nations about the workings of the world around them.

Thus, storytelling is a means of passing along information, but it does not mean there is only one correct version of any given story. During a telling, listeners can speak up if they feel an important fact or detail was omitted, or want to offer a different version of the story. In this way, the people seek or arrive at a communal truth rather than an absolute truth. A storyteller may revise a story according to his or her own interpretation, or according to the knowledge of the audience, but in order for it to be acceptable to the group from which the story originated, it should remain true to the spirit and content of the original.

Traditional stories originate from a specific people, and we expect them to accurately reflect those people, but do they? As a Pueblo Indian woman, I wonder, what do our stories look like when they are retold outside our communities, in picture book format, and marketed as “Native American folktales” for children? Are our religious, cultural, and social values presented accurately? Are children who read these folktales learning anything useful about us?

Much of what I bring to bear on my research emanates from my cultural lens and identity as a Pueblo Indian woman from Nambe Pueblo. I was born at the Indian hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and raised on our reservation. As a Pueblo Indian child, I was given a Tewa (our language) name and taught to dance. I went to religious ceremonies and gatherings, and I learned how to do a range of things that we do as Pueblo people. This childhood provided me with “cultural intuition.” Cultural intuition is. that body of knowledge anyone acquires based upon their lived experiences in a specific place. As a scholar in American Indian studies, I know there are great distinctions between and across American Indian tribal nations. For instance, my home pueblo is very different from the other pueblos in New Mexico, among which there are several different language groups.

I draw upon both my cultural intuition and knowledge when reading a book about Pueblo Indians. For example, when I read Gerald McDermott’s Arrow to the Sun: A Pueblo Indian Tale (1974), I wondered what Pueblo the book is about. There are 19 different Pueblos in New Mexico, and more in Arizona. In which Pueblo did this story originate? That information is not included anywhere in the book, and there are other problems as well. In the climax of the story, the boy must prove himself by passing through “the Kiva of Lions, the Kiva of Serpents, the Kiva of Bees, and the Kiva of Lightning” Where he fights those elements. McDermott’s kivas are frightening places of. trial and battle, but I know kivas are safe places of worship and instruction.

Depictions that are culturally acceptable at one Pueblo are not necessarily acceptable at a different Pueblo. As such, elders at one Pueblo would say the book could be used with their children, while elders at another Pueblo would disagree. This is not a question of cultural authenticity; it is one of appropriateness in teaching, given a specific audience.