Retelling Trickster in Naapi's Language by Nimachia Howe

Author:Nimachia Howe [Howe, Nimachia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Social Science, General, Ethnic Studies, American, Native American Studies, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Folklore & Mythology
ISBN: 9781607329794
Google: gkm9DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2019-10-18T02:44:35+00:00

Land-Based Knowledge

Here, in the land, is where all the explanations and interpretations of the stories reside; but for many displaced Indigenous Peoples, including the Blackfoot, learning from it is complicated, since much of the landscape has been dramatically altered or otherwise changed or destroyed. Similarly, Naapi stories are appropriately considered in reference to site locators and maps, but they are subject to destruction and desecration as it is, so I hesitate to pinpoint them here. Naapi’s “playground” was drowned with the building of a dam, and his “bowling green” has also been altered. The mountains associated with him still hold their place, although his boulders have been removed or destroyed, his animals (e.g., buffalo) greatly diminished, and some birds (e.g., whooping cranes) exterminated, so they no longer have the same impact on the landscape. Nevertheless, as noted earlier, the sum of these locales alone cannot explain Naapi, Trickster-Creator-Destroyer, as place-based analyses alone are limited to land and sites and (once translated into English) to a noun-based space- and place-oriented project that loses the dynamic, unpredictable, “all-over” aspects of Naapi’s activity.

To begin with, after mapping some specific sites, all sorts of unmappable material remains: climatologically and meteorologically based phenomena, Naapi’s association with winds, stories about Naapi’s sisters, stories that include his female partner/co-creator—all of which combine to form descriptive and discursive patterns not tied to a specific place. Finally, there are Naapi’s maleness, recurring behavior, unpredictability, regenerative powers, playfulness, and perched-at-the-danger-point positions. Myriad references to Naapi include clues to his “home”—“where he likes to play,” his “sliding place,” his “perch,” how he “floats,” where he “sleeps,” his “jumping-off point”—and several of his escapades result in his being responsible for the headwaters of trickles, creeks, rivulets, rivers, and similar bodies of water that “give shape” to the homeland and put all people where they belong, also referred to as where they would thrive.3 Waterways map out boundaries. In each of these areas Naapi left his mark or some condition of the land that would be retold in story to recollect the formation and origin of all the coming generations would benefit from because its bounty was so rich and filled every bit of natural space.

Charles M. Russell, a western artist, spent a good deal of time among Indigenous Peoples in and around Montana, including the Blackfoot. Russell’s friend Frank Bird Linderman collected Cree, Chippewa, and Blackfoot creation stories, especially those about Naapi and his equivalents among other Indigenous Peoples. Russell and Linderman witnessed storytelling sessions that Linderman published and that gave Russell background on the Blackfoot worldview, which he used in depictions of Blackfoot in his paintings and sculptures. Russell reflected on Naapi—and his equivalents in Cree and Chippewa—and their creative roles, in particular how an authentic understanding of Naapi would prevent what he saw as virtual sacrilege in apparent war against nature, an attitude of non-Indigenous Peoples:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.