No One Hears Words on a Page: The Native American Oral Tradition

In “The Truth about Stories”, Thomas King, demonstrate connection between the Native storytelling and the authentic world. He examines various themes in the stories such as; oppression, racism, identity and discrimination. He uses the creational stories and implies in to the world today and points out the racism and identity issues the Native people went through and are going through. The surroundings shape individuals’ life and a story plays vital roles. How one tells a story has huge impact on the listeners and readers. King uses sarcastic tone as he tells the current stories of Native people and his experiences. He points out to the events and incidents such as the government apologizing for the colonialism, however, words remains as

One might not understand what makes one keep moving forward day after day. Nobody gets it unless they have lived in the footsteps of another. Ask any Native American. They have lived a life of others judging and misunderstanding and if they haven't their ancestors have. The Native Americans pass stories down generation by generation so surely they have heard what it was like to be misunderstood. They believe differently than other cultures, yet not one is alike. They have a very complicated and hard to understand system when it comes to their views. The way they view, believe and run their system is never fully understood unless one has grown up with the Native American culture. The religious culture of these people is what holds their

Native American literature is considered by many as the traditional written and oral literature of Native cultures around the world. Many of these literatures are transmitted over periods of time by storytellers. This particular literature has many features that includes a mixture of oral tradition techniques along with tribal mythology. The majority of these historic manuscripts of the Native Americans is deeply rooted in symbolic and mythic standards. This assignment will focus on how Native American literature is rooted in storytelling. The selected text of choice for the assignment is

In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will

For the purpose of this project, our group has decided to focus on Native American culture and their non-verbal communication patterns. We chose to focus on Native American culture due to their unique methods of communication. What makes this culture so distinct is the way in which they encompass their values into their communication methods. Their communication methods are unlike most cultures and are even utilized within Western culture in modern day.

Humans have several ways of communicating with one another, whether that is written, spoken, facial expressions, or through body language. We use all of these forms all the time, it would be impossible to live a day without speaking, writing or reading, making facial expressions, or using any body language to communicate with others. While all these forms of communication are commonly known, another form, not as intuitively obvious, is silence. Like all forms of communication, silence will change with reference to different cultures. Just as different cultures speak differently or have different languages, and have different body languages, cultures also have different meanings behind silence. Native American cultures have been described as reluctant to speak or lacking in personal warmth simply because their culture views silence differently than most Americans. Apaches use silence for situations of uncertainty and unpredictability, Americans prefer that silence does not happen at all but will accept it for situations of comfort or in some cases when they want to avoid small talk with strangers. These difference in the use of silences are simply due to the cultural differences between Apaches and Americans. As Apaches’ use of silence reflects their cultural values of recognition and respect, Americans use, or lack of use, of silence reflects their cultural values of directness and urgency.

Another component of the story’s allure is the role in it that the concept of narrative accrual plays. Narrative accrual refers to the collection of smaller narratives to form a longer one, such as with history, culture, and autobiographies (Bruner, 18-20). One of the most significant manifestations of

These recent times have been tough for the tribe. Since the appearance of the Europeans upon our lands there has been a great plague upon our society. They brought with them unknown diseases that have infected much of the tribe and killed many others, the Europeans go to our hunting grounds killing hundreds of buffalo’s for pleasure and we have been restricted to a certain piece of land.

“Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.-Native American proverb” This is a Native American proverb that shows how important storytelling and stories are to the Native Americans and their culture. Storytelling was a big way of teaching their lifestyle to their younger generation. Storytelling is very important to the Native American culture because it helps explain their way of life, faith, and helps teach life lessons to the younger generation.

In the tradition of Native American culture, there is no custom of written records of personal life or tribal history. Even though they have written language, the major way to record history is by oral storytelling. Those stories focus more about creation time, tribal and family history rather than individual life. Recording autobiography from different Native American tribes is a convention way for anthropologists to preserve the Indian traditions, which gradually decline and lost after Native American contact with Western culture. Moreover, the autobiographies of Native American individuals also fulfill the public curiosity about their culture. Nevertheless, the culture differences create the confusion and misunderstand in the written records. For the people does not familiar, and understand the Indian cosmology, the autobiography provides us as a tool to reveal the secret veil of Native American. In the same time, it leads a certain degree of deduction about the narrator original meaning.

Sium and Ritskes (2013), argued that indigenous people should be breaking colonization with academic articles through indigenous ways, one way is through story telling. Storytellers are important to indigenous culture, for their existence, survival, identity and connecting people and bonding the people together (Sium and Ritskes 2013). However, storytelling is also important to decolonization by, proving indigenous people had a way of life before colonizers, and acknowledgement of the sovereignty over their lands (Sium and Ritskes 2013).

Native American literature is the root of cultural storytelling, which is told through oral tradition, this consist of stories and songs verbally. Native American literature use literary conventions in the root of myth and symbolic examples in storytelling. The book “Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology” gives good insight into the Native American ways of life and how storytelling is a part of that life. Short stories by Simon Oritz and Luther Standing Bear share life experience and cultural diversity. The reader can see how historical, social and political, and cultural ways play a role in the Native Americans storytelling.

All stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies. They are known collectively as The Hero’s Journey. Understanding these elements and their use in modern writing is the object of our quest. Used wisely, these ancient tools of the storytellers craft still have tremendous power to heal our people and make the world a better place (xxvii).

After reaching the outside edges of this musical arena, the true penetration of excitement occurs. An enormous steel plate decorated with a brilliant brass halo hangs on a slim, silver frame circumscribing the magnificent steel plate. A trapezoid of thin aluminum tiles placed in two meticulous rows across a thick ebony base rests gently, waiting for a majestic and seemingly undiscovered musician to compose amazing melodic tunes of grace and peace on its brittle keys. Sturdy skins of beastly predators stretch taut across their compressed wooden shell identical to a native American replication of a warrior’s cry as he marches his tribe into battle. Trailing in the forgotten distance perches a somber tower of drab coffers stacked with immense

Storytelling is really important in Native American culture. Centuries of history and information with limited and expensive writing instruments were bound to get lost. One way to prevent this from happening was storytelling. Stories about war, hunting, cultures, etc. might not have been known if it weren’t for storytelling. Stories were told from generations to next generations as a way to preserve traditions, cultures, or past histories. This needs to continue in the current generation so that they can have a better understanding of their ancestors and a better appreciation for their cultures. If Natives do not tell their own stories then we will see non-Indian historians tell the story for them which might be accurate but it will not be