Similarities between Indian Tales and African Tales

        A few semesters back I had the privilege of taking West African literature.  Although we mainly read novels by authors from that region we spent a small portion of the class reading early African tales.  After reading a lot of the Native American trickster tales in our class I was reminded on the African tales because of their extreme likeness.  Even though both areas are miles and miles apart the stories of both peoples had the same feeling to them.  They were playful and humorous.
         One thing in particular that stood out was that the stories from both regions mostly consisted of animal characters.  Much like the Indian tales, the African tales have a few recurring characters like Crocodile, Giraffe, Eagle, and Cheetah.  The African tales also have a trickster character.  From class we know that the Indian trickster character is often Coyote.  In African tales the trickster is often the character Anansi, meaning spider.  

In some stories Anansi is portrayed as a spider-like man who gets himself into sticky situations he must trick his way out of.  One of my favorite is the story of Anansi and the Sky God.  The version I read seemed to be of Anansi as an animal.  I found a really cool video that someone made of that tale that shows Anansi as a man but the story follows the same plot.  It is basically about Anansi bringing the power of stories to the earth.

    Another similarity I found between the two region's stories is a sort of aloofness with sexuality and bodily functions.  Although I don't consider myself prudish in any way, that was one thing that was quite foreign to me.  I wish I had kept the textbook from that class to recall some of the stories because they are pretty hard to find just searching online.  Here is a link to it though in case anybody is interested:  http://www.amazon.com/African-Folktales-Pantheon-Folklore-Library/dp/0394721179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327994662&sr=8-1
      Anyway, one thing I remember is that we were lucky enough to have an exchange student from West Africa in the class with us and he told us his favorite story that his grandma used to tell him about how the cheetah got its spots.  I couldn't find it online anywhere and so I'm a little unsure about all the details but basically he tried to eat another animal, some trickery and shenanigans occurred and he got pooped on.  Forever giving him spots.  
     Stories like that and like the Monster Skunk, where the main character is just going around crapping on everybody, are pretty hilarious but not really the sort of stories I grew up listening to.  I'm very much accustomed to the contrastingly feces free Aesop's Fables.  Aesop's Fables have a lot of similarities with Indian and African tales as well.  There are almost always animal characters teaching a moral to the reader.  I have to remind myself of the similarities when reading these tales so as to relate to them and better enjoy them.  

Reel Injuns

        In class we watched the film 'Reel Injuns'.  I thought it was a really great documentary that made me think about a lot of the movies and especially the cartoons that I watched as a child.  With my parents being amateur cinephiles I had seen almost every single western that the film mentioned however it had never occurred to me to question or really think about the image of American Indians that those films were portraying.  Somewhere in my mind I hadn't thought of them as the same people of Indian descent that I had seen and met.  I guess I had just always pictured those images of Indians as ancient people who no longer lived in this world.  Growing up in Michigan (and later just visiting every summer) my family lived very close to a Chippewa reservation.  I had met many American Indian people and never really realized that these were the people who were being portrayed on TV and films.  However, I never visited the reservation, that I remember, to fully appreciate and view their current culture and what they were doing to keep their own identity.
        When the film brought up Pocahontas I did a little bit of self-assessment on the extent of my knowledge on the subject.  As a little girl she was easily my second favorite Disney princess (second only to the little mermaid).  However, just like the Indians in the western movies I never pictured her as a real person, someone who actually lived and breathed.  I never learned much about her, if anything at all other than the legend, in my history classes as a kid.  So I set out to get an idea of who Pocahontas really was.  For those of you who are like me and are somewhat ignorant on Pocahontas, or Matoaka (her real name), here are a few helpful links.  The first one is an article written by Chief Roy Crazy Horse of the Powhatan people that clears up some of the factual errors.  The second is a book that many of the websites I visited cited as a factual piece of literature that attempts to look at the history under the Disney myth.

http://www.powhatan.org/pocc.html

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3JA3LIHJE41UW/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3JA3LIHJE41UW



As a final thought; In class when we were talking about how many of the American Indian people have a good sense of humor I couldn't help thinking of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpGfyp6MxkM