We still tell stories: An examination of Cherokee oral literature.

Abstract

A primary objective of the study is to show that Cherokee Indians are not antiquated human beings stuck in history, but a modern, contemporary people with deep ancestral connections to their heritage. The stories they tell are that connection.

Chapter Two further explores the rift between Western and Native lore and literature, primarily that of the Cherokee. Causes for the rift are examined; among these are religion, ways of thinking, ways of learning, and roles of storytellers in each paradigm.

One purpose of this study is to gather, analyze, categorize, and disseminate traditional folk tales of the Oklahoma Cherokee Indians. Work such as this has been done in the past, but not for some forty years. This is certainly among the first---if not the first---study of its kind in the new millennium.

The study uses traditional library research along with field interviews with Cherokee elders and storytellers. The combination of these two research methods presented the opportunity to present Cherokee folklore in the same light as Western Civilization's canonized folklore, something rarely done.

Chapter Four contains an analysis of authentic Cherokee authors in juxtaposition to those authors found in Chapter Three. The authors in this fourth chapter contradict, sometimes point for point, most things the commercial "Cherokee" authors note in their works. The authors in Chapter Four offer true Cherokee ways and methods of teaching, learning, understanding. In addition to the authors, several field interviews conducted in support of this study are contained in this chapter. The interviews are with Cherokee elders and storytellers from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Chapter Three is an analysis of what I call "Commercial Cherokeeisms." Those are books written by authors claiming to be Cherokee and promoting alleged Cherokee ways, but when examined with a Cherokee mindset are nothing more than hybridized religious practices of, primarily, various forms of Buddhism and Taoism. These are being marketed to a consuming public trying to ease their troubled souls with a "quick fix" of Native American spirituality. Not only does it often not work for the troubled individual, it also further harms the image of Native Americans in the Western mindset.

In Chapter One of the study, foundational definitions are noted. Definitions for such terms as the following: folklore, myth, legend, fable, and fairy tale. The comparison then begins when certain canonized tales of Western literature are compared to "marginalized" tales from Cherokee lore. For example, creation tales of how the Earth and creatures came to be. Popular Western literature reverts to a deity creating these. So, too, does Cherokee, and many other Native American, tales. Yet the Western lore is accepted as gospel (no pun intended) where Native American lore is dismissed as superstitious nonsense.