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Native American Trickster Tales
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Questions for Discussion and Writing
For readers from many backgrounds, stories of tricksters are easier to connect to than legends of creation or exploits by heroes from cultures other than their own. A trickster sizes up a predicament, a cultural obstacle, or some other convention of behavior and action, and finds a surprising way through it or around it. Not only can a trickster story celebrate resourcefulness and imagination, it can also challenge those habits of mind that organize the world around us and keep us confined within it. Possibilities open up – and for a moment, across generations and cultural divides, we can feel a flash of affinity with another someone, real or imaginary, who “thought outside the box” and won. These stories also give us glimpses of human relationships and interactions of words, anticipations, deceptions, trust, and surprises.
1. The European American and African American folk traditions are full of practical jokers and wily deceivers. From stories you heard or read when you were younger, choose two or three tricksters and compare their tales to what you see in these Native American narratives. Where are the similarities and differences in spirit, and in implications?
2. In these Native American trickster tales, the cultural accoutrements are usually simple, yet “virtual realities”(VRs) are sometimes an important part of the story. In our own VR culture, what has happened to the trickster tale? Check out a web site for contemporary narratives of practical jokes and deceptions – short films, counterfeit news stories, and other brief glimpses of people being outfoxed or deceived. How has the trickster tale been enhanced or compromised by the advent of slick technology – and in what way
have some of the archetypes remained the same?