My maternal grandpa, Percy Bullchild, wrote a book entitled The Sun Came Down: The History of the World as My Blackfeet Elders Told It. Incredible book. Every single person should read it. Folks who are interested in creation stories should especially read this book. It is a very substantial and beautiful book full of stories of how things came to be. As a storyteller, I hope to someday make a work as profound and necessary as his book. He was our grandpa. We grew up about 200 yards away from his trailer. Those were the stories that I grew up with and pretty much the way that I saw the world. Some people grew up knowing the Bible stories and understanding the world through that great book. Us, we grew up hearing (and then reading) Blackfeet creation stories as our framework for the way we saw ourselves in the Universe. I can’t say that I “knew” that it was true—I wasn’t that woke as a nine year old. It was just all I knew—it may or may not have been true, but it sounded right to me. It wasn’t until I moved away from the Blackfeet Reservation that I realized that many people (most people?) did not see the world the same way. In fact, “most people” don’t see the world any one way—there are literally millions and millions of beliefs systems and creations stories and beliefs and worldviews. Most of them are unprovable as being absolutely right or absolutely wrong. If they were provable, more people would probably subscribe to that particular belief. Makes sense to me.Read More on the Story:
Gyasi Ross: Bering Land Bridge, Mastodon Bones and Creation Beliefs: Seeking to Know the Unknowable (Indian Country Media Network 7/27)
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