BBBBBBBLog post 2! Why even listen to this stuff?

The most important thing about listening to the creation stories rather than purely reading them on a page is that we are hearing these stories as they were told within their communities. The Hopi creation/emergence story was especially resonant for me. Being told in the language of the Hopi with the visuals reminiscent of the Hopi artistic tradition allows for us to understand and more deeply connect with the story and the community that it originates from. It is so easy in our modern world, where the diverse variety of native histories and people are so often sidelined or entirely ignored, to feel as though they don’t exist anymore or are melded into a single conglomerate of “native.” But the videos of these stories being told breathes new life into these histories, it shows us that they are not long forgotten or destroyed, they still exist today and it is important for them to be heard. The Cherokee and Lakhota stories accomplish this same result but in a different way than the Hopi video, they are told by members of the nation that the stories belong to. This again shows us that Cherokee and Lakhota people are not dead, but rather are still kickin’ it here with the rest of us. The Lakhota story told in the same place where the original members of their nation emerged also reminds us that these histories cannot be entirely categorized as fables. They exist in the physical world and are deeply connected to it, the setting can be seen and visited, we can imagine the first people emerging. It is far more real when there are parts of their history definitively connected to the “real” world as we see it. In the videos of Cherokee and Lakhota stories we can see a real woman telling us a story passed down to her through generations, we can look into her eyes and hear her voice (albeit through our screens and speakers) and recognize her humanity. We can see that she is like us, human, and is gifting to us her understanding of the world and its history. This is why it is essential to hear and experience the telling of their histories through real people, in the way that the knowledge was passed down to them. But what do these histories tell us about them? How do these help us understand their culture and values better than if they were to be simply written into a list? The same conceptions of moral and spiritual integrity could be known. Well, in the Cherokee creation story there are no human beings, no one to fulfill the role of the ‘ideal Cherokee’; however, there are animals, though not perfect beings, they do not have all of the necessary traits for one to model themself after but each animal does exemplify one ideal quality. The impatience of the buzzard, strength of the bear, wisdom of the owl. This gives us insight into the Cherokee understanding and appreciation of nature that simply telling us “Cherokee deeply value nature and balance” does not. We can see the details of how they might interact with nature, how they might see themselves and those within their community through the lens of the animals around them. It can more easily allow us to connect with the perspective of a Cherokee person. Their values are clear in their history, especially the appreciation of those that people may assume to be too small or ‘useless’ to aid their community. This can be seen with the Cherokee story and arguably the most important animals within it, the water beetle bringing the mud to the surface of the water and the spider bringing the fire back to the shore.