Native_American_Literature___a_Tribalography

University of Jordan Faculty of Foreign Languages Department of English Language and Literature Graduate Studies ( MA. English Literature and Critcism) Literature and Society (1502718) Professor LeAnne Howe Zainab Al Qaisi ( 8080519) Beyond Native Stories, There is a Written Passion: Listening to a story about the history of my ancestors, told by one of my grandparents, and retold, again, in another circumstance, is somehow different from reading the same story, with the same storytelling components, in a book. Or hearing its details in one of the radio stations,; or watching this narrative on television, either in a film or a documentary form. Telling such stories, especially the native ones, is a burden that we shoulder over decades, and unless we are capable of remaining the spirit of “Origin”, we should not blame, but those who submit to the confederacy laws, for transforming these story into “History”, “Fiction”, or “True Fiction.” Reading and investigating “The story of America: A Tribalography”, has urged me to research North American tribes, their origins, some of sensitive issues regarding their languages and habits. Therefore, a quest for the term “Tribalography” is initiated, what do the writers mean by “Tribalography”' And how much this term is relevant to a story of a nation, that could through times become “myth”, and their history' Our stories (the natives’) are drown back to tradition and folklore i.e. folktales or folksongs. Although you can find the same story retold by most of the American Indian tribes, there are some variant versions of these “legends”. Thus, the term “Tribalography” can be divided into two parts; the first is “Tribe”, and the second is “Biography”, so this term means: a presentation of the tribal life cycle through centuries, that is written to shed light upon the origins of each tribe, its language, legends, stories, its people and their habits, the tradition and place. In addition, tracking, relatively, the tribe’s relationship with other neighboring tribes, and investigating the impact of political (colonial) regime on the natives (The American Indian, in this respect). Presenting such definition might not be sufficient for most tribal cultures; however, having the concept of tribalography itself, for American Indian writers, made a quantum leap revolution that help others ( students, scholars, and historians) investigate and understand the conception of identity. The concept is about is a story that draws the past, the present, and the future, either in the form of an oral story (i.e. the Greek bards who were telling epics around the fire) that summons imagination, and in this term it might become a “myth”; or in the form of a document, that is written and modified to please the taste of readers throughout the time, and in this term it might be transformed into “history”. “Myth” is a modern word that undergone many changes and definitions, yet ambiguous. Thus, when it encounters within a context it indicates a sense of unreality regarding the exaggeration in events or describing people. Still, there is a need for myths for both individuals and nations need them. Are myths real or unreal (fiction)' On the one hand, myths were real stories about the glories and triumphs of people, they claim that nature, the mother, helped them in their wars through all nature’s devices and livings such as animals i.e. birds, rabbits, horses, even the trees, which gained the slogan of wisdom. On the other hand, myths got its title and had the symbols in it because of the multi-variant interpretation, adaptations and definitions. It was transferred orally. And through the decades each story teller adds the suitable components and elements to fit the story the time is being told in, without changing the soul of the narrative, so we have here “something made or fashioned”, in this respect, it is fiction. myth is therefore an “imaginary construction (which means neither ‘real’ nor ‘unreal’, but disposed according to the rules of the imaginary), having the purpose of showing the essence of the cosmic and social phenomena, strongly linked with the fundamental values of the community and with the purpose of ensuring the cohesion of the former.” Native stories tells the story of these tribes history, and “people without history as if the do not exist”, what kind of history' All nations : people, their tongue language, their tradition , have history, and they create it through the course of their life, yet history means all the written documents and registers of a story. Now, the on who writes these stories and register it in a document is a historian, who provide a written record of people and their culture from his point of view, the histories, the stories are the same but when a historian interfere and write the narrative, he/she transfer it from a speaker’s angle that is not objective, that is “true fiction” Pocahontas is very vital example of what happened in Native America, and her story with john smith, the white-comer. The real story of Pocahontas is merely different from the cartoonize story of Disney, but both stories present how a culture’s story become a Myth, and how the savage confederacy in the Pohatan tribe tried to change the whole spiritual relationship between the tribe and nature, the solid bond with nature is the reason why those natives have the unite, the unite the white-people seek. Pocahontas’ journey to London and her experience their did nothing, and discovered that the savages are only who lives in chaos and corruption, and those who under-appreciate nature and trying to change its course by killing animals and cutting off trees. The spirit women, the warrior women, the horse and its bond with the individual, the hawk , the rabbit, the trees as well, all these natural elements have been active in all the native stories that appeals every one from all pages.