Talk:Traditional narratives of Indigenous Californians

It is hopeless to write an article about "Californian" traditional narratives. It would make more sense to write about "Uto-Aztecan mythology", but even that wouldn't be a very promising approach. The peoples of northern vs. southern California are completely unrelated, and thus it cannot be expected that their traditions have anything to do with one another. The article manages to say "Patterns in the relative similarity of shared narratives are almost entirely dictated by the historic-period propinquity of the groups sharing narratives." That is amazing! it is a completely trite commonplace phrased so that it sounds as if actually something intelligent or educated had been stated. That was selected more or less at random. We also have the gem "As a consequence of weak narrative unity, the stories often have a composite character. Motifs are rather freely added, dropped, or transferred from one narrative to another. "As a consequence of weak narrative unity, the stories often have a composite character. Motifs are rather freely added, dropped, or transferred from one narrative to another." Only in Native California and in every other culture on the planet!

How about we cut down the pseudo-academic circumlocutions and focus on what is actually known about these traditions. --dab (𒁳) 08:06, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * so fix it! babbage (talk) 02:08, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

There are several inaccuracies in one contributor’s comments on this Talk page.

The writer says, “It is hopeless to write an article about ‘Californian’ traditional narratives.” It is certainly not hopeless, but the writer evidently means that the geographical category for narratives is a somewhat arbitrary one, which is true, as it would be for “Pacific Northwest,” “Southwest,” “Great Basin,” “South,” “North American,” and so on. No claim is made that there is an overriding unity or relatedness to the traditional narratives within the state’s boundaries. But there is some unity in the history of the region’s anthropological and folkloric studies. In fact, the geographical arbitrariness makes the use of this category preferable to “Uto-Aztecan mythology,” which would tend misleadingly to imply an overall unity to the various Uto-Aztecan groups’ traditions and a shared origin in proto-Uto-Aztecan, which would be quite false, and it would direct attention away from the often-greater commonalities with nearby non-Uto-Aztecan traditions.

The writer says, “The peoples of northern vs. southern California are completely unrelated.” Again, this is inaccurate. If the Hokan phylum is accepted as valid (which is open to debate), it extended from the northern to the southern extremity of the state. Unquestionably Uto-Aztecan is valid, and it extended to or near those extremities. There is nowhere within the state a sharp line that separates northern and southern portions of the state with respect to language, traditional narratives, or culture in general.

The writer quotes as a completely trite commonplace, “Patterns in the relative similarity of shared narratives are almost entirely dictated by the historic-period propinquity of the groups sharing narratives.” This “commonplace” is not true of some other regions where narratives are substantially more conservative, for instance in some Old World regions.

The writer quotes, “As a consequence of weak narrative unity, the stories often have a composite character. Motifs are rather freely added, dropped, or transferred from one narrative to another,” and says this is true “in every other culture on the planet!” That, again, is not correct. Some cultures have traditional narratives that are quite conservative, for instance as a result of taboos requiring their word-perfect memorization and recitation, the sacredness of oral texts, incorporation of stabilizing devices such as rhyme and meter, etc. See Jan Vansina’s “Oral Tradition as History” for a better assessment of the diversity in conservatism and fluidity. In this context, Native California really is an interesting case.Rhyme4 (talk) 18:41, 2 January 2021 (UTC)