In our Western European culture, when we think about "medicine" we typically think of doctors, hospitals, lab work, etc. The Native Americans have a different view of "medicine," and I think it explains a lot about how they view their traditional stories.

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For Native Americans whose first language is not English, medicine has a meaning more closely related to sacredness. When stories are told, it is because there is something that everyone can learn from them. In the article titled, "UNMASKING DASHKAYAH: STORYTELLING AND HIV PREVENTION," by Terry Tafoya, PhD., they say, "American Indian elders tell us it is important for us to tell these types of traditional stories because there is something about them for the past, for the present, and for the future. And it may well be that there are no longer huge hairy monsters who come out of the woods and steal our children, but there are other things that steal the ones we love, only these days we call such things AIDS. We call such things gang violence. We call such things addiction." (Tafoya, pg. 57-58)

Tafoya goes on to say that when these traditional stories are looked at as more metaphorical, they can be useful to teach many different lessons, rather than taking a single story at face value. This can oftentimes make the reader disconnect from the story because they cannot relate to seeing, say, a hairy monster in the woods.

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We see this same theory of storytelling for the purpose of learning lessons in the article Stalking with Stories by Keith H. Basso. The author recounts a story of a young girl, home from college, who attended a puberty ceremony with curlers in her hair, which is not the custom. A couple of weeks later while at her grandmother's camp for a birthday celebration, the grandmother told a tale of a forgetful Apache police officer who acted too much like a white man. Even though the story was not at all about a young girl going to a puberty ceremony with curlers in her hair, the granddaughter knew the story was told for her sake. She got up quietly and left the birthday party, and ultimately ended up throwing away the curlers, since they were the way of the "white man."

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In the article by Tafoya referenced earlier, they also mention how in the Bible, Jesus tells parables in order to get across messages and teach the people lessons. The parables that Jesus tells confuse a lot of people who try and take them at face value, and the stories are often about servants and masters, etc. For those who can see into the deeper meaning, those are the ones who learn what Jesus had for them. In the textbook by Sims and Stephens, Living Folklore, 2nd Edition : An Introduction to the Study of People and Their Traditions, the authors talk about Proverbs, similar to a parable: "Proverbs, or proverbial sayings, are not performed in the sense that a person stands up in front of others in order to recite them; rather, they are most often performed within an ordinary, everyday situation, usually as part of a conversation." (Sims and Stephens, pg. 132)

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In conclusion, Native American Folklore is often performed as storytelling, but usually these stories are not just for fun, and sometimes should not be taken literally. They are to be thought of as medicine -- sacred lessons for the past, present and the future.

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