The Folkloral Voice by Ian William Sewall

Author:Ian William Sewall [Sewall, Ian William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781315418476
Google: xSAuDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35864182
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

One can only hope for a life where the rice cakes are tasty and many, the mountains appropriate and few, and the tigers inattentive. As the stories of Sparrow, Dafna, Rattler, Mosum, Pesimwastches and Sakastenohk all suggest, one can only hope. There is, at the very least, a good story in that.

Deer Hide Painting: Goose Wings of Fidelity

STORY AS HIGH FIDELITY

Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God. (Wilder, 1955, p. 23)

Brother Juniper sought, throughout his life, the truth of the accident that a later novelist would call The Bridge of San Luis Rey. And yet for all of his cataloguing of testimonies and trivialities, did he or the novelist Wilder find truth, find the “central passion” of the characters’ lives? Is it enough that each in his way sought and struggled with fidelity?

The plaited world of the storyteller is all about fidelity. It lives and dies on notions of true and untrue, both in the stories and in their telling. When I on occasion spin a tale to a group of youngsters, they invariably ask, “Is it true, is it really true?” They want to know if I have spoken with faith and intention, if I have adhered to truth, if our moments together have been of high fidelity. As I sit writing, here on the green Dunvegan banks of the Peace, I similarly reach out my hand for the Great Spirit, wishing to write with fidelity of my storytellers, wishing to intimate the central truth that is their lives. And to attempt that pursuit, I must begin naturally with a story of truth, the story of the white crane:

I think the first person I met was Nabew, having just moved to the northern and woodland community of Spirit Rock. He was hunched by the edge of the river, shooting his .22 rifle at little pieces of driftwood that floated by on the Peace River. And not just shooting, but hitting! The man could shoot. No one could touch him. There was not a better hunter in the village, I soon learned. That colored fall Nabew killed 14 moose and with his wife distributed the meat to the community, the old way. His immediate family kept only the bullet-shot pieces. Even the hides were fairly distributed for tanning.

That next spring, Nabew was out with his partner trapping muskrats and beavers. And early one morning, while kneeling to sip from a freshly thawed creek, Nabew’s tobacco pouch slipped from his shirt pocket into the muskeg water. But just as he reached down to retrieve the pouch, Nabew noticed the reflection of a magnificent white crane on the surface of the water. He quickly wheeled about to catch a glimpse of this rare creature, but not quick enough. The Great White Crane had already disappeared into the northern sky.

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.