Reading Notes: Alaska, Part B

The Ghost Land by Katharine Judson: This story was very peculiar and strange. I have found that many of the Alaskan Indian tales are sad and include death. This story in particular is about the wife of the chief's son that died. He goes to ghost land and finds her and brings her back, but others can only see her shadow. I think this could represent the fact that when a loved one dies we still see them everywhere. We are reminded of them in our everyday lives and it is easy to still picture them being with us. For others, they may only see the shadow, not the full picture.

The Boy in the Mood by Katharine Judson: This story is how the sun and the moon came to be and how they rotate about the world. A boy was in love with a girl and tried to follow her into the sky. He was unable to keep up though and so he became the moon and she became the sun. When he began to fade, she would feed him and make him whole again. This story seems to be about how a woman provides for a man, instead of the other way around which I thought was interesting.

The moon and sun

Reading Notes: Alaska Part A

These stories are from a collection of Native American folktales. I chose to do the ones focusing on Alaska. My brother traveled her a few years ago and loved it so I thought it would be cool to learn some of its native history through its stories.

The Origin of the Tides by Katharine Judson: As the title discusses this is a story of how the tide came to be. Qa, the Raven, built a house under a rock and twice a day someone would open and close a door causing the tide to go in and out. Then the stories discusses a man who goes out into the waters and is affected by the tide. The tide is something that will forever confuse me so I thought it would be interesting to somehow incorporate this story into one of my own where I can make the tide make sense.

Ocean tide

Raven's Feast by Katharine Judson: This story was quite interesting to me. It told of how everyone followed what Raven did. When he had a feast, so did everyone else. When he had fancy hats, others followed. This story helps to tell of how people felt about others and how respect was of great importance in Indian tribes. Even if things may have seemed excessive, wasteful, crazy, etc., if you respected the person and were to follow what they did, then you did just that.