Contact us at: whispernthunder1@gmail.comSacred Stories
~ Dr. Dawn Karima
In the old ways and in the old paths, we did everything with stories.
Indigenous people all over the world taught lessons with stories,
remembered history with stories. Oh, and even things like recipes,
ways to cook or ways to tan hide or ways to find the best water or
hunting grounds, they were all told in stories. In the old paths,
everyone was homeschooled, right, because everything you
needed to know, you learned at home from your elders, from your
medicine men, from your spiritual leaders, from your warriors,
your hunters, your mothers and grandmothers, matriarchs.
We told stories to teach you about baskets. We told stories to teach you about arrows. We told stories so the next generation could tell them to their children and their children and their children, the seventh generation and beyond.
My granddaddy used to say that nobody ever really passes away. They're still alive as long as someone talks about them. And stories told us about people who were important to our lives and our family, our friends, leaders, people who had done great things and had interesting lives, but also people who were important just to us, made a beautiful difference in our lives and the way that we walked in the world.
So stories were also entertainment. In the cold and the dark of the winter or in times and seasons when we couldn't be outside, depending on the weather all over the world, stories were a season. We had stories to learn, but we also had stories to entertain.
I mean, long before streaming or any kind of digital entertainment, we had storytellers. They could tell stories that made you feel like you were there when it happened on a great adventure. They could tell stories that were wise and transmitted lessons and culture.
They could tell stories that corrected things that were wrong by reminding us of how to do the things that were right. They could tell stories that just simply made you feel like you had gone on a journey because you were hearing about it. We used our imagination, but we also used our hands.
Sometimes people would tell stories and they would be words and people would listen and they would use those words to imagine what it must have been like, to experience it through all the senses as they imagined what happened. Yet there were also other people who would take those stories and make them into beadwork or pottery, paint the story like art, draw, color. Some of the stories that we know now and that we tell now all over the world have also been drawn or painted or beaded or sculpted.
These are wonderful ways to remember these stories. There are stories that have foods that go along with them. There are stories that have dances or songs that accompany them.
There are stories that remind us of who we are. My great-grandmother used to say, we're not that kind of people. When people did something or suggested something or wanted to do something that she didn't feel met with the highest standards of her family.
Stories do that too. We see what happens to people when they do good things and we see what happens to people when they have a bad mind and we get to decide who we want to be and what we want to do. Stories give us an opportunity to grow.
They give us an opportunity to know. They give us an opportunity to show too. I mean, sometimes you can show someone better than you can tell them.
And a story does that for us, like an extended metaphor. I could tell you not to be greedy or I could tell you a story about what happened to someone who was. I feel that stories often are released into the world to heal.
And that means stories can be medicine too. I'm a person who speaks from the heart, just like right now. I'm not a manuscript preacher or a person who uses notes, but I feel like sometimes the right story drops into my heart to tell at the right time and it helps someone.
I know the stories I've heard have certainly helped me over the years. We think of stories as the old past and traditional stories and I believe that is wonderful. I am absolutely sure that that is fantastic.
But I also believe that stories are more than we can name. Stories are whatever we need them to be whenever we need them to be. Just that thing.
If it's a dark and cold and stormy night on the plains, the story becomes entertainment, maybe even diversion from the storm outside. If it's a child that needs to learn a lesson about their behavior, then that story becomes correction. If it's someone who needs to remember how to do things, then that story becomes a manual.
How do you go about this? How do you make it work? I don't know every story all over the world, but I do know something about every story all over the world. Each one of them starts with love. A love for the culture, a love for our relatives, a love for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and their children and their children and their children, a love for the land and the earth and the water and the sky, the plants and the animals.
It starts with that. But we cared about this so much that we want to remember it and we want to be able to tell the future generations exactly what is happening and what happened before. And another thing that stories do is they make us immortal.
They let us live on in the hearts and the minds of our seventh generation, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren and their children and their children that may never meet us in the flesh, but will know us by the Spirit. That's why it's so important to be a good ancestor. I know other cultures think about legacy in terms of their descendants and how that reflects on them, but we think about our role and how it reflects on our future generations.
Every decision that we make should be considered to the seventh generation. If we do this, who will suffer? If we do this, who will grow? If we do this, what else will there be? What else will we be able to do? What will happen and why? Stories have another purpose, and I don't know if people talk about this as much as we should because we do concentrate on the traditional stories. We concentrate on the old paths, and we should.
People died to make sure that they kept those stories alive, the language alive, the traditions, the culture, the world, as they knew it for their future descendants. But I do believe that stories create understanding, peacemaking. Why did we do it that way? Why didn't we do it that way? When I tell you a story, I'm telling you something about myself and the way that I see the world.
And so stories have an incredible power of peacemaking in them because it allows you to see just for a moment the world according to someone else. Empathy, compassion, those are developed through stories too. Stories are the initial source of social emotional learning.
When you hear what happened to Brother Rabbit or you hear what happened to the Pleiades, if you hear what happened to someone from a culture other than yours, you can have great understanding and empathy. And when they hear what happened to the animals and the plants and the earth and the sky and the people of your culture, they can extend compassion toward you, and that makes peace. That is absolutely peacemaking.
I don't know how many times I've had to say this, that when the dominant culture says, how are you, they respond with fine, okay, good, and everybody moves on. But for many of us in indigenous cultures, when you ask us how we are, we tell you a story. What happened at the grocery store? What did I see on my walk today? And I'm not talking about a long, drawn-out story.
I'm just saying that we share stories like currency. We trade stories. And now you know a little bit more about me, and I know a little bit more about you, and you can see the world through my eyes a little bit better.
And maybe, just maybe, that's a chance to heal and walk in peace. I don't know everything about stories, but I know a lot of stories. And I know enough about stories to know that each story is a gift.
We can think of it that way. Our nonprofit, Wells of Victory, our Indigenous Inspiration Academy and Indigenous Inspiration, Indigenous Mama, we have many gatherings virtually of storytelling and transmissions of teachings. And people do see those as a gift.
I'm convinced of that because of the way they respond. People have tears in their eyes. They laugh.
They donate. They want to come back. When is the next one? But now we need to see the stories that the elders tell us as a gift.
You're riding in the car with your parents, and they start telling you about when they were young. That's a gift. You're visiting the elders at the elders center or care home, and instead of thinking, oh, no, this is where we have to spend our Sunday, think, oh, my, the stories they tell us are a gift.
They paid for those stories with their lives, and we can learn from them. My granddaddy used to say there's two ways to learn anything. You can make mistakes, or you can have mentors.
And stories are mentors. When your grandparents told you about a similar situation they were in and how they dealt with it, that's to keep you from heartbreak and harm that they experienced. Stories can protect you.
They can because you can think back about a time this happened and what you did and why you did it and not make the same mistake again. Learn from someone else's story. They did this, and it cost them dearly, so I won't.
That's even true of the small, true stories we see on social media. People tell us their experience with something, and we can actually then apply it to our lives if it's true and genuine. I wonder when it comes to stories if we're remembering to add our own.
I have been gifted so many stories, and I'm so very grateful by my elder relative who understood that I had an interest and cared about these stories, and so they gave me these stories. Learn to tell it just like I tell it, my uncle used to say. Oh, you need to tell this one. And then they'd tell me a story. I would meet their friends. I would meet elders of a different generation, and they would give me their stories. Just sit down and tell me a story. And I remembered. And how I know those stories were meant for me, I never had to write them down.
Just over the years, I would remember them, and they would be in my spirit, and when I needed to tell them, I would tell them. And then there became a time when people sought me out to tell these stories because the elders are leaving us, especially with the ravages of the pandemics, which are still ongoing. And so a lot of our top-tier elders have been leaving us in a hurry.
And so now it's those of us who are much younger, youthful, younger people, not elders yet, that have to remember what they said and make sure the seventh generation knows it, our children and their children and their children and their children and beyond. There's a sense of urgency now about stories. We can't wait any longer.
We can't wait until our birthday. We have enough birthdays and have seen enough winters until we get to that point and we're 65 and up and we can start telling stories now. We have to tell stories now.
We have to tell them today. We have to tell them immediately. We have to tell them.
It's an urgent matter because if we don't tell them, they won't be told, and the next generation will be without them. And so I've reached a point in my life where I get invited now. People ask to hear stories.
They ask me to tell stories. They say, "You're a wonderful storyteller. I could listen to you all day."
And I used to think, well, you know, I should be an elder. But there's too many years between now and then, and these stories need to be told now because the children now need to learn them, know them, preserve , keep them, tell them themselves. Some of the greatest storytellers I've ever heard have been children.
I mean, you ask an adult what happened at the pumpkin patch, and, yeah, okay, great. Ask a child who went on the same trip to the pumpkin patch, and it's delightful. But as we tell these stories, I think there has become a hagiography where people say, oh, it's got to be told exactly like Uncle So-and-So told it, and don't, you know, deviate from the way Mamaw told it.
And those are beautiful, wonderful stories, and we should be very careful to tell the stories in a good way. But there's no such thing as perfection, and if we wait to start remembering and sharing and telling and knowing our stories until we get them exactly like someone else had them, that day may never come. And so I think the most important thing about storytelling is to have a good mind and a good heart when you tell these stories.
Oh, now, I've been thinking about this a lot, because modernity is the whole point of survival, not assimilation, not changing, not renouncing the culture, not cultural appropriation. But the reason that we survived is so that we could keep our culture and keep our traditions. And that means these precious stories from indigenous people, tribal people all over the world are precious and important.
But if we don't come with them into the future, then they become relics, fossils, potentially. These beautiful, wonderful stories of the old past and the old ways which we so dearly love must be accompanied by people. What I mean by that is that I believe we should tell the stories of the old past in a good way, and those should be our treasured traditions and ways of doing and being right.
But we should also begin to tell our stories too. What happened to you? And I don't mean drama. I don't mean a reality show.
I don't mean that. I mean, for example, you're telling a story of how Kituwah Mound came to be. And then you share the stories of your time as a shell shaker or a stomp dancer at that mound.
And right there, we've placed that beautiful story, historical, traditional tribal story, in context of what it means now, how something came to be, and what it means to me as a tribal person now. It's incredibly powerful. I'll prove it.
The cookout. One of the best things about any cookout, especially in the South, among families of color especially, is the stories, whether you call them tall tales or fish stories or wolfing or any stories that people tell about themselves, their lives. You listen to the elders, you know, and they'll tell you some stories, and you'll be amazed.
You'll be laughing. You'll be enjoying these stories so very much. Those stories are important, too.
The stories about the beginning of days and how things came to be and the old paths are so precious. They are treasures, and they're gems. And it reminds me of a little song I used to hear.
Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold. And I think about those stories that way.
That, yes, we have the precious treasures of the old paths that the old ones fought and survived to be able to hand down to us. And then we have the sweetness of the stories that are about our lives, our kinfolk, places we go, things that we do, all kinds of things that are wonderful and memorable and important and precious, and we get to be part of all of that every time we tell our stories. It is an ache in my soul that our son, who is named with the same name as my beloved granddaddy that I quote all the time, will not have a chance to meet him in this earth and this life.
And so I tell him about him. And one of the reasons I quote him all the time is because I love him and I miss him. And as long as I'm telling people the wise things that he said, which people love so much that they keep asking me to write a book, can you write down all of his quotations? Can you write down everything he ever said so that we can read it and know it and keep it going? And you know what? That keeps him alive in the earth because people remember him and people who've never met him were like, wow, that was some good advice, or that was a good story.
And you know what? It is. It really is. And so when we think about the people we love, whether they're still here or not here, when we tell stories about them or the stories they told us or stories in their honor, do you know what that does for us? It allows us to see them alive and vital and vibrant and moving around in the earth and the impact that their lives had on us.
Isn't that wonderful? Oh. And so when we talk about stories, I want us to consider thinking about our old and traditional stories but also thinking about the stories of now. Talk about our families and talk about our culture and talk about the ways that we do things.
They have taught us these good, wonderful ways and we keep them alive like this. Because that does something wonderful for our children because it personalizes these things and it makes them relevant to them and to us and keeps them moving forward in a good way. That is the blessing of our Sacred Stories.