A NOTE ON INDIGENOUS STORIES
I am a listener and have been listening to stories told around me for
longer than I care to admit. I mean to honor my teachers by
passing on the stories that they have passed on to me.
We are told that stories are living beings, they grow, they
develop, they remember, they change not in their essence, but
sometimes in their dress. They are shared and shaped by the land
and the culture and the teller, so that one story may be told widely
and differently. Sometimes only a fragment is shared, showing just
one face of a many faceted story, depending on its purpose. So it is
with the stories shared here.
Traditional stories are the collective treasures of a people and
can’t easily be attributed with a literature citation to an individual
source. Many are not to be publicly shared and these I have not
included, but many are freely disseminated so that they may do
their work in the wider world. For these stories, which exist in many
versions, I have chosen to cite a published source as a reference,
while acknowledging that the version I share has been enriched by
hearing it multiple times in different tellings. For some, I do not
know of a published source for a story passed on in the oral
tradition. Chi megwech to the storytellers.