Book Captures Tribal Stories, Storytellers
In years to come, North Idaho tribal elders may tell how their ancestors once spoke to the world.
Their story would tell how the Indian voice was heard with all its sincerity and pauses and inflections.
It would be a tale about “Stories That Make the World,” a written collection of Indian verbal literature edited by Rodney Frey. The University of Oklahoma Press has just distributed the $24.95 book worldwide.
“Stories are very fundamental to being an Indian,” said Frey, a white anthropologist and director of Lewis Clark State College’s Coeur d’Alene programs. “The power of words to create the world is an idea somewhat alien to our own culture.”
Other collections of Indian verbal literature exist. But Frey maintains they are Anglicized and inappropriate.
“They lack acknowledgment of the storytellers,” he said. “We wanted a book that speaks to the heart of the Indian storyteller, but we wanted it accessible.”
The project began three years ago when Frey worked on the Coeur d’Alene School District’s language arts curriculum committee. He had lived with Montana’s Crow tribe in the 1970s and ‘80s and knew the richness of Indian stories.
He suggested sharing the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s stories with fourth-graders as another source of literature. The tribe was eager to help, but wanted to know Frey’s intentions were pure.
For months, he was invited to powwows, family gatherings and sweat lodges. The Coeur d’Alenes got to know him. They shared their stories.
“I told him stories in auditoriums, libraries, basements, churches, the VFW hall in St. Maries, everywhere,” Lawrence Aripa, vice chairman of the Coeur d’Alene tribe, said with a chuckle.
Frey taped the stories and transcribed them into a notebook for children. He wrote an introduction for each story and created a teacher’s guide.
The project worked so well that Frey decided to expand it into a book for everyone. He enlisted the help of Tom Yellowtail of the Crow tribe, Mari Watters of the Nez Perce and Basil White of the Kootenai. He taped their tales and added them to Aripa’s.
To his transcriptions Frey added italics for words storytellers emphasized, and dots to indicate their pauses. He also included stage directions.
“I wanted to show the rhythm, give a sense of the traditional language,” Frey said. “The challenge was to present authentic stories as authentically as we could.”
Aripa was impressed with Frey’s work.
“When he showed me one of the stories I had told - the way it was written - it was just like me telling it,” the silver-haired storyteller said. “You could almost hear my voice.”
The book includes myths that tell how the world was created, why the lake is blue, how the Nez Perce people originated. They feature such characters as Coyote, Salmon and the Swallowing Monster.
The tales tell of people’s strengths and foibles: the father who tried to trick his son into hunting more than necessary, the hunter generous enough to shoot a deer for a hungry tribe.
Frey is such a stickler for authenticity that he included one tale in the original Crow language with the translation below it.
“There couldn’t have been a better way,” said Dixie Saxon, a member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe’s cultural affairs committee. “This is not a story a writer is telling his own way. It’s our way.”
Aripa admits that the written version of the stories he tells scares him a bit.
“Maybe I’m telling it wrong,” he said, worry deepening the dark creases in his brow. Or people will interpret it wrong because they can’t hear the variations in his voice, he said.
Aripa knows some tribal members are not keen on giving Coeur d’Alene stories to the world. But he believes his grandfather wouldn’t have told him the stories if they were to be kept secret.
“A story is to be told,” he said. “It happened. It teaches a lesson, tells of great things.”
MEMO: IDAHO HEADLINE: Book captures tribes’ stories, storytellers