Talk:Salishan oral narratives

So bad it should just be deleted

This just isn't worth fixing, it's not like there's one Coast/Interior Salish mythology and what's here is simplistic and just not culturally appropriate. Whatever language those names are from isn't even written like that, and I don't care what the sources are; they're not authentic and are hopeless out of date, and out of whack.Skookum1 (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree the article is bad, but no, it shouldnt be prodded. The sources are excellent and if you dont think so then its because you havent nlooked, each narrative is told by named tribal elders of the many different Salishan peoples and translated and edited by some of the most capable linguists and anthropologists. A very good article could be written about this topic based on the sources in the article.16:29, 21 August 2013 (UTC)User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·

Yes, but as with my unveiling ot he "Coast Salish" pipe that you added to 'Salish' then what the hell are the Kalispel doing being mentioned in the article at all? You're in over your head, Maunus.Skookum1 (talk) 01:06, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

And you are as always gracious and kind.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:02, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

"Salishan" is not an ethnographic group, it is linguistics only, using it otherwise is OR/SYNTH (as is this article's whole context)

Man, you are defending and reinventing terms just to justify this article's SYNTH nature by creating more SYNTH usages? There are Salishan languages and people who speak them; they are not a monolithic ethnic group; this article was mistitled from the start and based on the Montana Salish at first, Squamish (a misnomer) appears to have been added to it to justify the SYNTH context erected around it. There should be:

• Skwxwu7mesh mythology
• Shishlalh mythology
• Mythology of the Sto:lo peoples
• St'at'imc mythology
• Secwepemc mythology
• Nlaka'pamux and Scw'exmx mythology
• Sinixt mythology
• Sylix mythology
• K'omoks mythology
• T'zouke mythology etc etc
• etc etc etc. And the term "mythology" is an imposed external term not actually used by the peoples themselves but for intents and purposes of the subject matter here, it is not acceptable to create a new use for the term "Salishan" as you are insistent on doing, Maunus. That this article needs such fiddling of terms is just more proof of it inherent flaws. The drift of Wikipedia content to more and more OR and SYNTH topics is very disturbing and very anti-encyclopedic. Moving the goalposts to create new fields and new topics is 'not on'.Skookum1 (talk) 03:04, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Pretending there is some kind of uniformity when even the WSANEC and Cowichan and T'zouke and Snuneymuxw - all neighbours - have totally separate bodies of so-called "mythology" is just more and more wiki-OR based on one or two books' misapprehensions and their misinterpretation.....why Squamish/Swkxwu7mesh and Kalispel/Flathead stories are in the same article is a demonstration of the over-reach of this topic. Your pretense that "Salishan" is a valid term for a not-unified corpus of stories and peoples is just MORE Synth, and is making things worse.Skookum1 (talk) 03:07, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I am going to continue to follow the reliable sources, and you are not one.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:40, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Sunum̓twi. Kʷiqs meyeɫtem tʔe ste.

Ha an x̣menč kʷqs wenši, Skookum ?  :)

Seems to me pretty much all stories are either more mythological or more factual. Unless you're finding examples of the same story told in different dialects, this material looks like it belongs in separate articles to me also. qʷo eɫ meeɫt some examples, then we'll talk.

As far as not being a reliable source, kʷec̓sceni? Imše kʷ x̣est m še putʔentxʷ ɫu a snkʷsqeleixʷ.

X̣est ɫu qs npƛ̓sčacews, Djembayz (talk) 04:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Look, here there is no requirement that articles about literature or folklore treat only a single ethnic group. We have articles on Mesoamerican literature, on Indo-Euopean religion and on Inuit mythology - all of which comprise several ethnic groups and several languages, but which are grouped together because of shared history. The Salishan languages used to be one single proto-Saloish language with a single set of oral history perhaps some 4000 years ago. Since then it has obviously diversified and all the groiups have developed new stories and adopted others from other groups, but it is still possible to treat them as a single historical grouping within the context of this article. One reason for doing so is that first of all we are never going to have articles on the oral traditions of all the different Salishan groups, another is the fact that reliable sources treat them together, another reason is that there would be considerable overlap among several of the articles - both because some of the material is shared among several groups (Coyote stories for example) and because the performance traditions seem to have been quite similar (prohibition on telling tales during summer, distinction between two genres). User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:17, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

the use of "literature" in the title and in your comment is problematic; the difference between oral traditions and the published accounts of those traditions; the latter is "literature", oral traditions are inherently non-literate i.e. non-literature; books about them are. But this isn't about a single ethnic group, but dozens; and the stories from many of those groups are shared, very often, with other non-Salishan peoples. The grouping here re mythology based on linguistic grouping is fallacious; and if it is about all Salishan oral traditions, then it being only about two groups (OK, three, the Nlaka'pamux are mentioned), then more than Kalispell and Skwxwu7mesh should be here, and even those two should be more developed than just the one item quoted; I note the basket ogress story is here simply because it seems to have been featured in a particular story app for phones (spamlink since removed). I"ll have to see a cite about your storytelling-only-in-summer issue being across the board with all Salishan peoples, I highly doubt that given the contrast between coastal and Interior peoples/lifestyles. The premise of this title, and some of the copy in the article, is that Salishan 'oral literature' has commonalities across the board; that language and myth are linked is indubitable; but suggesting that Salishan groups' mythologies are all the same because they share an ancient-proto language is ridiculous; Katzie and Kwantlen mythologies about the same topics are different, and they're only a few miles from each other; likewise St'at'imc and Nlaka'pamux, or even Lower St'at'imc and and Upper St'at'imc or from band to band within the St'at'imc. Same with the Secwepemc and Okanagan; Lushootseed Transformer Stories are very different from those of the Halkomelem-speaking peoples; and there's lots of publications about all those oral traditions; this title was concocted by someone who had a couple of books on hand about "Salishan" traditions, focussed on the Montana Salish; that it's still mostly only about those, despite the one example from the Skwxwu7mesh, points up the problem with the title. And the underlying assumption that the massive and diverse body of lore of the whole grouping of Salishan peoples shares commonalities distinct from the other peoples around them is a theory/supposition only. Then there's passages like the following, which if it's in the source needs to be line-cited as it's very much a theory and, if not in the sources, original research:

"One important difference between Salishan oral literature and Western literature is that Salishan traditional narratives are not considered to be fictive, or to be the result of the creativity of the narrator, rather they are considered to convey real knowledge of the world as passed down from the elders. The storyteller also does not "own" the story, although the best storytellers do give the narratives a personal flavor. Rather the stories are considered to be pre-existing and to contain all the knowledge of the world."

It juxtaposes Western fiction (literature) against indigenous legends/mythology; and implies that Western culture did not have a similar body of legends - distinct from the actual literary tradition though often the basis of it (Tennyson, Yeats, Shakespeare), which likewise in their time were considered in the same light as it's said here that natives see such stories. ..... So, if this article isn't supposed to cover all the different "Salishan" mythologies, why is it titled as though it were? In its current state it should be A couple of stories from Montana Salish and Squamish oral traditions or perhaps List of published versions of Montana Salish and Squamish stories; grouping two such far-apart peoples in one mythological grouping is a stretch and unsubstantiated as having any real meaning, other than they're both quoted in the same, particular book. Oral traditions of the St'at'imc, Oral traditions of the Sto:lo, Oral traditions of the Duwamish, Oral traditions of the Okanagan people are all legitimate titles. This is not - not in its current state - and speculations about commonalities not quoted as opinion from sources used, but stated as fact, are clearly OR and SYNTH.Skookum1 (talk) 11:12, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

where's the line cite for this??

Here's a tighter excerpt from the passage I quoted; it may be in the book that was used to start this article, but it's off-the-wall and comparing apples and oranges by playing word games with "literature":

[the difference between]] Salishan oral literature and Western literature is that Salishan traditional narratives are not considered to be fictive.

But what about "Western oral literature", which is a rich tradition, and was not considered fictive by its purveyors either, but a true account of the past; whether we're talking Greek myths or legends of trolls and giants in Scandinavia, or even the various Christian legendary lores. "Salishan literature", the phrase that would be the relevant comparison, would be output by writers who are from Salishan peoples, like Okanogan Mourning Dove, or who write about a Salish people, just as Pauline Johnson; the number of modern authors from a Salishan-speaking people is quite large in fact . If that book contains this, it should be stated as such as an idea from that book, not as if it were fact instead of theory (or in fact, just a bad comparison).Skookum1 (talk) 03:11, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

the word that comes to mind for that comparison is "specious", something too common in academic and quasi-academic literature nowadays; it may be in a publication, but as with so many the "reliable" part of "reliable sources" is highly dubious.Skookum1 (talk) 03:56, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Boas

I'll check this but I'm pretty sure that the Rev. Lundin-Brown and others e.g. Helmcken documented Skwxwu7mesh, Lil'wat, St'at'imc, Cowichan/Halkomelem ("Cowidgin" in past times was used to refer to all Halkomelem speakers) and other stories, not to the same degree as Boas true, but earlier than that.Skookum1 (talk) 10:56, 11 March 2014 (UTC)