Our Tellings: Interior Salish Stories

Richard W. Parker is an associate professor and chair of the Classics
Department at Brock University in St. Catharines.

Our Tellings encapsulates the challenge to younger and even
middle-generation First Nations peoples seeking to preserve an oral
literary heritage amidst an increasingly global culture. The editors’
goal is to preserve, as told, traditional stories before they fade from
living memory as the older generation passes away. That memory has
already degraded: for a generation, elders have not told these stories
because of embarrassment or lack of an appreciative audience, and
one-third of this book’s contributing tellers and translators died
before its publication.

Much work has been done collecting and publishing Northwest stories in
the last hundred years, most notably by Franz Boas and his protegé in
British Columbia, James Teit. But to a considerable degree these were
social scientists gathering cultural data. The present volume is an
attempt by the “Ntlakapmux people to take charge of [their] own
cultural revitalization.” For this reason the editors have made a
conscious and considered decision to edit minimally in order to preserve
authentic voice and show respect and gratitude to the tellers.

The impulse to reproduce tellings exactly as told, however, conflicts
with the editorial responsibility to provide accuracy and clarity. The
editors have remained so true to the storytellers that they preserve
intact slips of the tongue and linguistic features (the tendency in some
languages to use a personal pronoun, especially “he,” where a noun
would be clearer to most English speakers). Three examples: on page 94,
Dog has “brought the children,” not the other way around; on pages
56–57, Coyote (not son-in-law, the nearest antecedent of “he”) has
the magical power to shrink things; Coyote’s son-in-law (not grandson)
is perplexed at his trick.. The book comprises two sections: “creation
stories” and “non-creation stories.” The first are tales from the
mythical era when theriomorphic beings, like the randy and mischievous
Coyote, transformed the land for human benefit. The second are stories
from historical times, such as the poignant tale by the sage Annie York
of the ominous Salish encounter with explorer Simon Fraser. Rough-cut or
polished, there are many treasures.