Storytelling may well be the earliest method of communication, education, and entertainment. Although it has ancient roots, storytelling is still a vibrant and vital part of many Native American cultures.
Check out the resources linked below for more information!
After a career working and living with American Indians and studying their traditions, Barre Toelken has written this sweeping study of Native American folklore in the West. Within a framework of performance theory, cultural worldview, and collaborative research, he examines Native American visual arts, dance, oral tradition (story and song), humor, and patterns of thinking and discovery to demonstrate what can be gleaned from Indian traditions by Natives and non-Natives alike.
Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars' Club paints a vivid, fascinating portrait of a community deeply grounded in tradition and dynamically engaged in the present. A collection of forty interwoven stories, conversations, and teachings about Western Cherokee life, beliefs, and the art of storytelling, the book orchestrates a multilayered conversation between a group of honored Cherokee elders, storytellers, and knowledge-keepers and the communities their stories touch.
Flying With The Eagle, Racing the Great Bear is a continent-spanning collection of sixteen thrilling tales in which young men must face great enemies, find the strength and endurance within themselves to succeed, and take their place by the side of their elders.
The study of legends has long been a critical component of cultural anthropological analysis. In Native American Legends of the Southeast, George E. Lankford has compiled and analyzed a collection of unique and rare legends that will continue to appeal to scholars and students of Native American culture and the study of legends in general.
An illuminating look at Native origins and lifeways, a treasure for all who value Native wisdom and the stories that keep it alive.
The Quechan are a Yuman people who have traditionally lived along the lower part of the Colorado River in California and Arizona. The eleven narratives in this volume take place at the beginning of time and introduce the reader to a variety of traditional characters, including the infamous Coyote and also Kwayuu the giant, Old Lady Sanyuuxav and her twin sons, and the Man Who Bothered Ants. This book makes a long-awaited contribution to the oral literature and mythology of the American Southwest.
Sky Loom offers a dazzling introduction to Native American myths, stories, and songs drawn from previous collections by acclaimed translator and poet Brian Swann. With a general introduction by Swann, Sky Loom is a stunning collection that provides a glimpse into the intricacies and beauties of story and myth, placing them in their cultural, historical, and linguistic contexts.
Step into a colorful pageantry of the powerful people who once ruled and still influence the great state of Texas. From the Caddo in the Piney Woods, the Lipan Apache in the Southwest, the Wichita at the Red River, and the Comanche across the Great Plains to the Alabama-Coushatta in the Big Thicket, five nations come alive through myth and history in Jane Archer's vividly written book about the first Texans.
Newell Lyon learned the oral tradition from his elders in Maine's Penobscot Nation and was widely considered to be a "raconteur among the Indians." The thirteen stories in this new volume were among those that Lyon recounted to anthropologist Frank Speck, who published them in 1918 as Penobscot Transformer Tales. Transcribed for the first time into current Penobscot orthography and with a new English translation, this instructive and entertaining story cycle focuses on the childhood and coming-of-age of Gluskabe, the tribe's culture hero.