A Talk Concerning First Beginnings: Teaching Native American Oral Literature

Bibliography:

Bunzel, Ruth. "Introduction to Zuni Ceremonialism," "Zuni Katcinas," "Zuni Origin Myths," "Zuni Ritual Poetry." Forty- Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington: GPO, 1930. "Zuni Origin Myths" is the source of the text for "Talk." The other essays provide a rich and valuable context for this text and for Zuni oral literature.

Cushing, Frank H. Zuni Folktales. 1931. Rpt. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1986.

Handbook of North American Indians. 15 vols. Gen Ed William Sturtevant. Vol 9 southwest (Non-Puebloans), Vol. 10 Southwest (Puebloans). Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Essential historical and ethnographic information on American Indians. Vol. 10 has several authoritative essays on Zuni culture, history and world view.

Holland, Jeanne. "Teaching Native American Literature from the Heath Anthology of American Literature." CEA Critic 55 (1993), 1-21.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. "The Structural Study of Myth." Structural Anthropology. 1967. Rpt Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. A cogent analysis of thematic issues in the Zuni emergence story.

Murdock, George P. and O'Leary, Timothy. Ethnographic Bibliography of North America. 5 vols. New Haven: Yale U P, 1985.

Murray, David. Forked Tongues: Speech. Writing and Representation in North American Indian Texts. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1990.

Ruoff, A. La Vonne Brown. American Indian Literatures: An Introduction. Bibliographic Review and Selected Bibliography. New York: MLA, 1990. Essential resource.

Swann, Brian. Smoothing the Ground: Essays on Native American Oral Literature. Berkeley: U of California P, 1983.

--- . and Arnold Krupat. Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature. Berkeley: U of California P, 1987. Excellent collection with many substantive essays which discuss issues of translation and textmaking and offer models of interpretation.

Tedlock, Dennis. Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry of the Zuni Indians. New York: Dial, 1972.

--- . The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1983. Reprints several of Tedlock's important and groundbreaking critical essays on Zuni oral literature.

Wheeler-Voegelin, Erminie and R. W. Moore. "The Emergence Myth in Native America." Indiana University Publications Folklore 9 (1957): 66-91.

Wiget, Andrew. Native American Literature. Boston: Twayne, 1985. Ch. 1 on "Oral Narrative" discusses Emergence myths and myth systems.

--- . "Reading Against the Grain: Origin Stories and American Literary History." American Literary History 2 (1991): 209-31. Reads Bradford's Plimoth Plantation, Villagra's History of New Mexico, and Zuni "Talk" against each other as foundational texts establishing different senses of culture, history, and relationship to land.

--- . "Telling the Tale: A Performance Analysis of a Hopi Coyote Story." in Swann and Krupat, Recovering the Word, 297-336. A model of how the linguistic and performative dimensions of oral storytelling cohere in aesthetic experience.

Film Resources

Hopi: Songs of the Fourth World. Prod. Pat Ferrero. New Day Films, 1983.

I'isaw: Hopi Coyote Stories [Helen Sekaquaptawa]. Words and Place. Prod. Larry Evers. Clearwater Publishing Company, Inc. 1995 Broadway, New York, NY 10023. Winds of Change. Available from PBS.