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A review by gitli57
Coyote Stories by Mourning Dove
informative
3.0
This collection is primarily of historical interest. Mourning Dove is the pen name of Christine Quintasket, an Okanagan woman writer and activist who was encouraged (mainly by white men as part of the whole "disappearing Indians" project) to collect and publish the traditional stories of her People. Of course, to be suitable for publication and reading by white folks, the stories had to be shaped, edited and presented in a particular way. As Jay Miller puts it in the introduction, "despite claims of traditional authenticity, Mourning Dove's legends are not true to Salishan recitations. They have been sanitized, and the portions that she called 'ugly' have been removed. Nor are they as casual or spontaneous as they would be in native settings." It could be argued that they have been trivialized and robbed of their spiritual power in the process of being made suitable for white children's entertainment.
Christine Quintasket endured multiple periods in the residential schools and her People's traditional ways were being violently suppressed (they still are). Her editors and publishers were white men. She didn't have great options to choose from. At least she was part of the community whose stories she's sharing (unlike James Moody, for example, with his mostly bastardized "Cherokee stories"). And it is interesting to have an entire collection of stories from one tradition. There are multiple options available now for less sanitized versions of stories, but most of them are anthologies representing many different traditions.
As long as you know what it is going in, it's worth a read, especially as an example of where Indig folks were in the struggle for cultural preservation circa 1933 in the "great" Amurka.
Christine Quintasket endured multiple periods in the residential schools and her People's traditional ways were being violently suppressed (they still are). Her editors and publishers were white men. She didn't have great options to choose from. At least she was part of the community whose stories she's sharing (unlike James Moody, for example, with his mostly bastardized "Cherokee stories"). And it is interesting to have an entire collection of stories from one tradition. There are multiple options available now for less sanitized versions of stories, but most of them are anthologies representing many different traditions.
As long as you know what it is going in, it's worth a read, especially as an example of where Indig folks were in the struggle for cultural preservation circa 1933 in the "great" Amurka.