The lessons in the teacher's guide about the Bible's Old Testament are based on historic and scientific scholarship and, to avoid a sectarian point of view, focus on the factual data generated by academic research. The lessons are based on what is known about the nature of oral tradition, recent archaeological findings, and the academic biblical…

Dr. Terry Tafoya relates his experiences as a student and a therapist and integrates traditional Native American stories to illustrate the importance of balancing Western knowledge with traditional culture and values. Stresses the importance of approaching the acquisition of knowledge from different perspectives when developing graduate programs…

Describes the role of oral history in the traditions of Native Americans. Argues that although Western scholars have traditionally dismissed oral history as legend or myth, it is now gaining respect in higher education. Reviews efforts at incorporating oral history into the curriculum and discusses issues related to accuracy. (MAB)

Describes how a literature and writing professor uses readings, writing assignments, and class discussions to help students broaden their understanding or orality and literacy and to respond critically to implicit cultural and racial biases. Notes that a process of self-empowerment occurs for both black and white students. (SR)

Two Native-American graduate students' fieldwork involved teaching cultural heritage to Native-American inmates at Auburn Correctional Facility, New York. Through shared oral stories, readings, viewing Native produced films, and singing, the line between teachers and students became blurred and they became one group, learning oneness with…

Draws on Isabelle Knockwood's memoir about Mi'kmaw children's experiences in a Nova Scotia boarding school to examine the contradictory impacts of English literacy on American-Indian peoples and cultures. Discusses literacy as a weapon of colonial assimilation and, conversely, the appropriation of literacy within a Mi'kmaw system of knowledge…

Describes Southwest Virginia's rich tradition of folklore and culture and the need for its preservation. Summarizes the author's time-consuming process of preparing an inventory and indexing the vast archival collections gathered by students in American Folklore classes at Mountain Empire Community College and by the Southwest Virginia Folklore…

Pueblo author Simon Ortiz discusses Indigenous authors' use of their native language as a form of self-assertion, pointing out how African literature drives the decolonizing impulse in literature today. Use of the dominant language would reach a larger audience but would also make transmission of colonizers' cultural assumptions unavoidable while…

Coeur d'Alene School District (Idaho) developed an American Indian oral literature curriculum component with the help of the neighboring Coeur d'Alene people. This book is based on a general background guide that provides classroom teachers with a context for understanding Coeur d'Alene narratives incorporated into the curriculum. The book also…

This manual provides a general introduction to folklore and folklife. Certain articles herein may be used in a basic activity-oriented approach to the study of folklore, beginning at the fourth grade level. Other articles proved a more in-depth study of folklife and of the means by which folk culture is preserved and shared. The teacher must…

Stories of personal experience of supernatural events are a highly-valued form of verbal art for Cherokee speakers. Both the people who tell them and those who listen regard such stories as entertaining and instructional. These stories even reflect some of the tensions that exist between traditional Cherokee culture and modern American social…

Six stories told by Teddy Charlie, an Alaska native, in the Lower Tanana Athabaskan language of Minto, Alaska are presented here and illustrated with maps and photographs. A foreword offers background information on the storyteller and the recording of the stories. The six stories include: "When Minto Village First Began"; "How We…

This article describes "inshimi"--a musical storytelling practice of the Bemba people in Zambia. It gives a general perspective on the whole practice and some details on the "MUSIC" as contained in the practice. The article further encourages the idea that "inshimi" represents a nucleus of the "MUSIC"…

It took 25 years to develop and arrive at a consensus for a standard orthography for the language of the Innu, or Montagnais, who live in Quebec and Labrador. The principal obstacle to standardization came from dialect diversity. An effort at standardizing the spelling system in the 1970s failed because speakers were not ready to let go of the…

Fables and trickster tales are short narratives that use animal characters with human features to convey folk wisdom and to help people understand human nature and human behavior. These stories were originally passed down through oral tradition and written down later. The legendary figure Aesop was reported to have orally passed on his animal…