[MUSIC] Through stories and storytelling

Indigenous societies transmit the central knowledge critical to survival, and

provide a cultural framework for
promoting happy, healthy communities. In this way stories hold a lot of power,
think about it. Stories can elicit strong
emotions from humans. They can make us cry and laugh,
feel anger, relief, empathy, and love. Human beings enjoy telling stories as
much as they enjoy listening to them. Wherever and
whenever people meet and gather, you can bet there are stories being told.
Outsiders tend to see these stories as legends,
fiction, folklore, myths, or fairy tales. For Indigenous people, these stories
function in essential and thoughtful ways. They work to instruct and
educate on how to behave properly. They can also act as guides for
how to live and engage with the world. Each nation has a creation story and
it's own distinct oral tradition. There are four general components of
storytelling for Indigenous people. First, stories connect the past to
the present and to future generations. There are many versions of
the Wisacejak Creation Story, but the meaning remains the same as it
is told from great-grandmothers to their great-grandchildren. Stories are gifts to
be shared and
handed down generation to generation. As in Nehiyaw'iskwew, or Cree woman can be
reassured that while she may not
have met her great-great-grandmother. The Wisacejak story transcends
time and connects her to her ancestors. This means that a story I hear from my
grandmother is the same one that she heard from her grandmother and so and so on.
These stories allow us to communicate with
future generations in the same way our ancestors communicate with us. See how
powerful stories can be? Secondly, while the sacred stories
may not have changed much over time, the personal, everyday stories do change. They
integrate new information and
new knowledge. They may evolve with changing
surroundings, food source supply and movement, landscape reconfiguration, and
new encounters with foreign populations. It is important to know that even though
Indigenous stories may be thousands of years old, some of the stories change to
bring the past forward to the present. They change and evolve based on
the needs of the population. The next thing to remember about stories
is that while stories may sometimes be entertaining, there are also messages
instructing
people how to live and behave. Indigenous storytelling operates as
a moral guide in a socializing mechanism. Stories teach the next generation how
to behave and reinforce roles and responsibilities. We find many examples of this
in the story of Wisacejak. Muskrat’s heroic action of diving for Earth demonstrates
a lesson
of perseverance and courage. While Wisacejak's laziness in
keeping a peaceful community shows the consequences
of being irresponsible. Finally, storytelling is a way to
transmit the history of the land and cultural knowledge to the next generation.
Many creation stories include specific
geographical boundaries such as rivers, lakes, and
mountains to define the territorial lines. For example, in the previous narrative,
Nehiyawak described how Wisacejak
made the land come to be. In some Wisacejak creation stories,
features of the landscape to describe the traditional territories
of the Nehiyawak are included. The natural surroundings of
the land become the history book. We said that stories have power, and they embody
complex worldviews associated
with a particular Indigenous culture. For instance, the Nehiyawak or storytellers
will only tell you
the Wisacejak stories in the wintertime. Their worldview and belief systems
are illustrated by this fact. Nehiyawak storytellers believe that
because so many creatures and spirits hibernate and sleep in the winter,
it is safer to tell certain stories. Invoking the stricter’s name Wisacejak
in the summer is just asking for trouble. [MUSIC]