[1] Falling under the banner of oral tradition, it can take many different forms that serve to teach, remember, and engage Indigenous history and culture.
Storytelling is an attempt to reinforce values and beliefs and has a chance for future generations to have a connection to their ancestral roots through stories.
These stories may reflect social and physical environments that existed in preservation eras and long before, thus giving present-day listeners insight into past realities.
[4][5] Oral traditions educated younger generations and maintained indigenous social, spiritual, and cultural systems for ten thousand years.
[2] According to Bastion and Michaels, colonialism, through the spread of disease and disenfranchisement, reduced the indigenous populations of North America, though their stories sustained.
[11] The method of storytelling was selected, largely in part, for its reflection of how biologically the human brain remembers information and the ease by which it can transmit them.
[1] For indigenous cultures of the Americas, storytelling is used as an oral form of language associated with practices and values essential to developing one's identity.
[11] Indigenous American communication is rich with stories, myths, philosophies and narratives that serve as a means to exchange information.
Elders mentor and provide support and have systematically gathered wisdom, histories, skills, and expertise in cultural knowledge."
"Histories are shared inform a discussion of (a) types of stories, (b) oral storytelling as pedagogical tools for learning life lessons, (c) the process of witnessing in storytelling to honor Indigenous traditions and ancestors and reflecting the processes of the ancestors in a modern world, and (d) sharing stories of spirituality as sources of strength."
[16] In the Sioux culture, the character of Iktomi, a spider, illustrates the follies of selfishness, disrespect, pride, and other negative traits.
[19] Hernandez-Avilla explains that origin stories allow indigenous groups to connect to their world and to understand their identities and how they fit into the historical space and time.
[6] For the Cup'it Eskimo, their land origin story explains how Raven crafted their homeland of Nunivak Island by taking soil from the mainland and placing it in the ocean, where it then joined with a piece of ice floating.
[6] For the Apache, their place-names are part of their origin oral tradition, each named after events that happened to maintain their cultural history.
The Sto:lo community in Canada focuses on reinforcing children's identity by telling stories about the land to explain their roles.
Elders in the Sto:lo community emphasize the importance in learning how to listen, since it requires the senses to bring one's heart and mind together.
[23] A way in which children learn about the metaphors significant for the society they live in, is by listening to their elders and participating in rituals where they respect one another.
According to some of the Navajos that were interviewed, storytelling is one of many main practices that teaches children the important principles to live a good life.
For children and adults in Navajo communities, storytelling is one of the many effective ways to educate both the young and old about their cultures, identities and history.
Therefore, children in the Quechua community are encouraged to listen to the story that is being told in order to learn about their identity and culture.
[30] Oral traditions help protect indigenous properties and histories when working with federal agencies in North America.
The current legislation of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) requires that "geographical, kinship, biological, archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, folkloric, oral traditional, historical, or other relevant information or expert opinion" are taken into account when determining Indigenous claims to artifacts.
[32] Legally, archaeologists must consider oral traditions as a legitimate form of history and as a way to understand the culture of not only modern society, but their ancestors as well.
Archaeologists, who study artifacts from the past, have used the term "prehistory" to designate history before written language, which includes all of Indigenous peoples' oral traditions.
[32] NAGPRA requires that legal proceedings and historians and anthropologists alike consider consistency, conformity, context, and corroborating evidence of indigenous oral tradition as a truthful recollection of historical history.
This shows the importance of elders and their responsibility to help future generations with the effects of colonialism affecting indigenous culture by erasing it completely.
Elders mentor and provide support and have systematically gathered wisdom, histories, skills, and expertise in cultural knowledge (Smith, 1999).
[37] In "Land as Pedagogy" by Leanne Simpson, she explains that storytelling fundamentally concerns the telling of and generating of the Nishnaabeg worldview.
[37] Without the land, removed by colonialism or by environmental destruction, Nishaabeg storytelling loses its grounding point for the transmission of cultural knowledge.