Author name: jobeaver

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After personally listening to the stories from class this week, it gave me a newfound appreciation for the traditions of oral history within communities. The entire idea that I am able to listen to these stories now as if I were present during their literary creation is pretty mind-boggling to me. Listening to these stories allowed me to understand them in a different way as opposed to reading them. By being able to learn and comprehend these audibly it allowed me to personally take in more detail as opposed to reading a text. The one that stood out to me were the continuities between the creation stories and a lot of religious tales from around the world. In the Cherokee origin story, they bring up the idea of an above, middle, and below, which is strikingly similar to heaven, earth, and hell. In the Cherokee origin story as well, they talk of the ways in which animals shaped the landscape, such as the buzzard carving the mountains and the valleys of their homeland. I believe that a lot of the characteristics we see within a lot of Indigenous peoples’ cultures such as the resiliency, sustainability, and cultural vibrance are very direct correlations for the appreciation of the earth that was told in the origin stories like the buzzard. The deep rooted philosophical appreciation for nature has allowed for a culture built around sustainability and nature, and brought these appreciations and respect for the outdoors that we understand today. Our nature in and of itself is a very colorful and vibrant place in the universe. Nature and the world we live in being appreciated at the forefront of their culture has brought along those traits of vibrancy and allows for a very unique spin on the cultural structures we learn. The social structure being matriarchal is another feature of the societies that we see and I believe that it carves away many of the systematic struggles that we endure in patriarchal societies. With all of these different interpretations of life we see, nature and family are at the forefront. This allows for the resiliency we see, as those are what Indigenous peoples’ were fighting to protect in a lot of the struggles we have seen throughout history.

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