Oral traditions and myths have long been an integral part of Native American cosmology. Not only have they been - and continue to be - an essential part of handing down Native American customs, norms, beliefs and cultural histories, but they also form a communal mythic discourse.

This discourse is not a "fixed text," but rather a dynamic process of interactive relations that are developed over generations of experience and passed from relation to relation and generation to generation.

In this sense, the traditional structures of mythic discourse serve an integrative function: to form a coherent basis for communal identity in terms of a shared set of fundamental ideas and beliefs expressed in multiple forms.

The oral traditions and myths recorded in this book are part of the communal mythic discourse of the Lakota Sioux people. Originally collected and recorded at the close of the nineteenth century by two Native language speakers - Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala Sa - these oral traditions provide some of the least distorted or colonially disrupted examples of the Lakota Sioux communal mythic discourse. Containing over 40 oral traditions, Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths brings together into a single volume these remarkable myths and legends.

Author: Peter N. Jones | Contributors: Native American oral traditions recorded by Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala-Sa | Soft cover, 283 pages