Winged Messenger Nations: Birds in American Indian Oral Tradition
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What is Oral Tradition?
Oral tradition is the process of disseminating the history and culture of a society through the spoken word. Due to the fact that societies were generally believed to be pre-literate by western standards until about 4000 B.C., this method was relied upon until writing systems began to develop...More...
American Indian oral traditions are rich with stories about birds. Nowhere in Native America is this more accurate than in the Northern Plains, where raptors such as the spotted eagle, hawk and owl are critical characters...More...
In most Native American oral traditions, animals are viewed far differently than from Western points of view - not as soulless creatures to be used, manage or more recently to be paternalistically “preserved” in acceptable numbers, but more often as partners in life...More...
What is Native American Oral Tradition?
At the point of “historic” European contact, there were as many as six hundred Native Nations in North America with roughly three hundred languages roughly divided into thirty language families. In addition, the use of sign languages and jargons, or other amalgamations were pervasive....More...
Initiated and made possible through Black Hills State University Research Seed Grant Program. More...