We call them origin stories, these histories of how our world came to be, and we with it. The dominant culture uses far more dismissive terminology — “legend,” “myth” — but you will not see such labels used here. We are not so disrespectful.
Our peoples have always known the power of words: the power to summon worlds into being, to birth the universe and midwife each cosmos within it.
It is why we guard our words so carefully.
In some cultures, the language is, even now, irreducible to written form. Oh, the “experts” try, development complicated strings of letter and symbol in a colonizing alphabet to pretend to understanding, but they can never reproduce the intricate rhythms of sound, the complex melody of syllable and graceful harmony of inflection, that native speakers sing with every word. Wings sings his stories fluently, speaking the ancient song of his ancestors to the drumbeat of his own heart and breath.
For our peoples, our stories are our song, and our songs our story, but they are also something more solid and substantial than mere sound upon the air. Our stories are the the breath of life that animates our cultures and traditions, the building blocks of our communities, our homes, our selves.
They are our foundation.
Nowhere is that dynamic more present than in this place, where the homes are the community, where ancient foundations built brick by brick to emerge organically out of the earth still stand, one atop the next in solid structure of stories that reach skyward, and where ancient foundations built of syllables and song trace the people’s own emergence into the light.
In this place, home and community are one.
This world is built of foundational stories in substance and in spirit. Over the course of a life, these stories made of indigenous earth will be carefully and lovingly maintained, year after year, shored up and mortared and resurfaced so that a foundation that has stood already for a thousand years will stand a thousand more.
In the same spirit, the community keep its stories in another sense, held close and safe from the destructive and diluting influence of those for whom they are not meant. Over the course of a life, these stories made of indigenous spirits will be carefully and lovingly maintained generation after generation, history shared and lessons taught and wisdom imparted so that a people who have stood together already for a thousand years will stand a thousand more.
It is possible to see the old homes, to touch the clay, the straw, the earth of which they are made. It is possible to hear the old stories, to perceive the words, the songs, the syllables of which they are made. But they belong to the people of this place, and only to them, and only they will ever truly understand them. And that is as it should be. They are the foundational stories of their existence, in substance and in spirit.
Every culture has them, to one degree or another. For some, they have been discarded in favor of efforts to appropriate those that do not belong to them; for others, they have been erased, scrubbed from historical record and collective memory alike in any effort to alter reality. But they are there, and they are the foundation upon which each contemporary culture stands, for good or ill. It is often not the stories themselves that do damage, but rather, the lessons taken from them and given life of their own.
On this Monday at the midpoint of The year, it’s time to take stock: of our past, our present, our future; of the ancestors, ourselves, the generations to come. It’s time to remember our foundational stories, to place them in the context of our existence, to use them to create a better world for our grandchildren’s grandchildren. It’s time to give life to the good that their lessons have to teach us.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
