The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What does the term “oral tradition” mean? What are some characteristics of oral traditions?

Teaching Suggestion: Depending on your students’ level of familiarity with the term “oral tradition,” you may wish to offer them one or more of the following resources to help them approach these questions. Student backgrounds will impact whether their understanding of the term is primarily academic, cultural, or personal. All of these perspectives will enrich the discussion of the topic, and you might consider encouraging students to share answers through small-group or whole-class discussion.

• This brief overview from UNESCO’s “Intangible Cultural Heritage” site explains what oral tradition encompasses and how it remains significant today.
• This thorough discussion of the North American indigenous oral tradition is from the University of British Columbia’s site “Indigenous Foundations.”
• This 3-minute Button Poetry performance by two young Pacific Islanders shares the importance of oral traditions to indigenous communities.

2. What do you know about Native American storytelling? What are some of the ways in which it generally differs from storytelling in Western literary traditions?