Reading the story of Coyote and is twin brother, I can’t help but smile.  I found the story fascinating and, honestly, more believable than many of the other creation stories I have heard.  I don’t mean to discount other creation stories, but just find that I can relate more to this one; which, is essentially, the trademark of belief–feeling more connected to one thing than another.

What I find fascinating about the story is that it hits one of the most prominent issues between Indigenous people and European settlers: what is the truth, and whether or not it is proven by literature or story.  The very fact that “the younger twin [(the ancestor of white people)] stole a written document–a ‘paper’–he had been warned not to touch,” (9) shows immediately the connection of the younger twin to the written word.  This connection is only solidified “when confronted by his actions, [the younger twin] denied having done this” (9).  I find this element of the story fascinating because I believe it to symbolic of European settlers’ curiosity and need at the time to find a better way “to undertake a series of important tasks related to the creation of the earth and its first inhabitants” (9).  Yet, in contrast, Coyote (the ancestor of Indigenous People) “performed his duties exactly as instructed” (9).  I feel that these elements of the story show the heart of the problem of the conflict between the two cultures.  The European settlers live for change and making the world a better place according to them, and the indigenous people live for respecting the land and living through their promise to take care of the land and its people.

At the same time, with value being placed on either stories or truth, it is funny because although many people put more value on the written word, I have to admit that I place more value on stories.  Especially after reading this story, I realized why I have come to this conclusion.  In all honesty I believe that it all stems from fact that there is way too much emphasis put on the written word.  For example, the bible.  I don’t know too much about it, yet I know that it is a collection of stories that are believed whole-heartedly as truth and seen as fact by many people, mostly due to the fact that they were written down by someone who is believed to have spoken to “God.”  I feel like a lot of people justify their belielf in “God” solely because of the bible (a.k.a the written word).  But, because Indigenous people rely on stories as truth, I believe that this form of truth (especially before settlers came) is more reliable.  I feel that to believe a story requires more trust and thought than believing in something written down.  In addition, to continue to choose to pass down that story requires even more trust that the story is true.  After all, who would repeat a story/information that they felt was false?  At the same time, repeating said story and backing it up purely by trusting your ancestors for generations upon generations also requires a lot of trust, whereas backing up stories purely through a book means putting your trust in a stranger, essentially.  What I am getting at is that at the end of the day, more often than not, people tend to believe the written word than someone else’s.  If I were to tell you personally that UBC is closing down for the summer and then you went online onto a random person’s blog who said that it wasn’t, chances are you would believe the person online over me–regardless of the fact that both of us have the same credentials.  And I believe this is purely because somehow when something’s  in writing, it means more.   But, again, I feel like the spoken word has more weight.  I feel like anything can be written down, but through stories we strive to speak the truth.  Because of this, I rarely ever speak up in class because I am terrified of speaking lies (a.k.a the wrong things).  Yet, I am more comfortable writing (even when I am not sure of the “right answer”) because I am okay with being wrong on paper, as long as I write something down.  After all, it’s a lot easier to pretend like you know what your talking about on paper versus in person.  For that very reason, stories hold more weight for me because personal experiences hold more weight that “fact”/written word by a stranger for me.

I think the younger twin stealing the piece of paper is symbolic of the need for some people (a.k.a the European settlers) to hold the written word above all else as truth, so that when others question those truths they can pull out that piece of paper as evidence.  In contrast, Coyote’s trust in not needing to grab hold of that paper is symbolic of the trust he felt in whoever gave him the task and his belief that others would trust in him carrying out his task as well.  Thus, Coyote doesn’t have any reason to rely on the written word in creating his people until his twins decedents cross the ocean and start killing his people.  In a sense, he uses the written word only to stop his twin’s decedents from killing his own decedents because he knows the written world is the only thing that will stop them (people that hold the written word above all else).

Works Cited

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books, 2005.