"Western scholars develop history based on war-to-war timelines, interspersed with intensive, great-man profiles. Nothing could be further from Indigenous notions of how to tell history. In the first place, Indigenous cultures assume that peace is the natural state of humanity, so war cannot be the focus. Second, particular stories belong to particular places and may be told only at particular times. Third, history consists of a set of cycles, in each of which the people learned something really important to community cohesion and survival. Fourth, Indigenous Peoples are communal and democratic, so what matters is the central event of any given cycle and how all the people fared under it, not how some elite individual distinguished himself or herself by wielding power over others. Finally, qualified Elders are listened to as they relay the many versions of each story that exists. Each culture has its own geographical place, to which its stories are tied. The rivers that run through it, the weather, the plants, the animals, the people - everything is seen in terms of its spiritual connections to its locale. Thus, for instance, the Lenapes are called "the Grandfather Nation" because they were the first to arrive in Dawnland (the mid-Atlantic coast). Indigenous cultures have, moreover, particular times of the year, which coincide with when particular stories are to be told. Thus the Laguna-Keres-Acoma story Kochinnenako, or Yellow Woman (Corn), is told at the change of seasons from winter to summer, which also signals the shift of civic responsibility from one half of a clan to the other. In the eastern woodlands, storytelling is not even allowed during the summer, when all the crops are being planted and tended. Everyone loves a good story, so if the Elders told stories in the farming season, everyone would stop work to listen, and nothing would get done. This is why "going ga-ga," or telling stories, is put off until harvest time." truth-out.org/opinion/item/16987-how-would-american-indians-teach-us-history#.UcX8oKDEh_8.facebook ~A
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 23:01:05 +0000
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