Comparing Stories: Embracing the Circle of Life

Abstract / Resume This paper examines two traditions: the Anishnaabe and the Irish Celtic, and the roles that their languages and stories play in their respective spiritual traditions. In order to appreciate these spiritual traditions, one needs to see that mythos is more basic than logos. Mythos may be seen as a more effective medium for interpreting and experiencing spirituality encoded in what is commonly referred to as the oral tradition. What we intend to demonstrate in this paper is that the sacred is inherent in the stories themselves. The stories today, having been transformed into literature, continue to act as a conveyor of the sacredness within language and within the story itself. Literacy merely makes accessible the stories for Indigenous peoples whose languages have been decimated. Le present article examine deux traditions orales, la tradition Anishnaabe et la tradition celtique irlandaise, ainsi que le role de la langue et des histoires dans leurs traditions spirituelles respectives. Afin d'apprecier ces traditions spirituelles, il faut voir que le mythos est plus fondamental que le logos. Le mythos peut etre considere comme un medium plus efficace pour interpreter et vivre la spiritualite codifiee dans ce qu'on appelle couramment la « tradition orale ». Le present article vise a demontrer que le sacre est inherent aux histoires elles-memes. Ayant ete transformees en litterature, les histoires actuelles continuent d'etre des voies de transmission du caractere sacre integre dans le langage et les histoires elles-memes. L'alphabetisation facilite l'acces aux histoires orales des Autochtones dont la langue a ete decimee For thousands of years, singers and storytellers have wondered about the relationships between real and imagined worlds, between life and art.... And many of our conflicts across cultures come down to a disagreement over whether stories and songs create or merely communicate thought and feeling.1 J. Edward Chamberlin. The aim of this paper is to examine two traditions: the Anishnaabe and the Irish Celtic, and the roles that their respective languages, and stories play in their respective spiritual traditions. Scholars of comparative religion, such as Mircea Eliade and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, attempted to find commonalities in religions, so as to better understand the nature and function of religion in human life. What I intend on doing in this paper is to add to the comparative religion literature by comparing the Algonquin traditional legend, Amik Anishnaabewigoban [When Beaver Had Human Form] with the traditional Celtic story The Voyage of Maelduin. How might such a comparison support or not support Joseph Campbell's claim that, after exploring dozens of cultural themes through story, universal themes are likely to be found in other comparisons of the over six thousand cultures in the world?2 More importantly, how might these shared themes relate to Storytelling and the Sacred? Members of the Anishnaabe tradition and other interested readers often feel bound to make interpretive statements about the moral of a particular story and how a particular story might relate to the sacred. From even a cursory analysis of the traditional Anishnaabe story, we can see that the teller creates a convincing performance of the narrative, rich in discourse features and useful for the enjoyment and instruction of his audience. Certainly such taken-for-granted, unanalyzed expertise on behalf of the speaker supports what Joseph Campbell writes, about what he considers to be the basic functions of Indigenous legends and myths. He writes: What human beings have in common is revealed in storiesstories of our search for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are (5). …

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