Making stories mean; making meaning from stories: The value of literature for children

Abstract

There is a traditional Iroquois tale in which a young man hunting alone in the forest, learning the skills that will make him a contributing member of his band, hears a strange voice saying that, in exchange for the hunter's game, it will provide stories. Looking around, he discovers to his surprise that the voice is coming from a large rock; but he politely asks, "what are stories?" Turning over the birds he has shot, he is given an example of a story, which he likes. The hero regularly returns to the rock, trading birds and other small game for more stories, which he takes back to share with the villagers. And that, the Iroquois explain, is how the traditional tales they still tell came to them.When I retell this story to children's literature classes at the University of .Alberta, many of the students are puzzled. Why, they wonder, should such a lowly object as a rock be the provider of such uniquely human things as stories? In responding this way, these people are revealing European-based attitudes in which rocks and stones are inanimate and inconsequential. 'Wou blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things," Shakespeare said, and most of them believe. But in many traditional Native cultures, rocks and stones were respected as being of great antiquity, as being elemental substances, and as possessing what the Iroquois people would call orenda, spirit power. To them, it would not be surprising that a stone should have given them such a marvellous and valuable gift--stories. It would have been appropriate that so important an element of their lives should have come from so ancient, significant, and powerful a being. 243