북아메리카 원주민의 창조신화와 ‘구비문학’의 가치 탐구

Search for the Value of the North American Indian Creation Myth and Oral Tradition

Almost all countries and cultures have narratives of the beginning of the world and foundation myths. Among those, the creation myth explains how things came into (human) being. The birth myth of a nation teaches their ancestors’ root or source and own symbolic culture. Many creation myths or narratives explain having the chaos or complete darkness before the creation of the world like Genesis in the Bible and making something out of a nothing existence like the American Indian myths. There is one difference to the American Indian creation folklores. They are delivered not by their own written texts but through oral tradition. These have been translated into English for describing American Indians’ earliest times and after the Creation Day. Their creation stories and oral traditions are rarely unified, have not been formalized or even have many variations within their different societies. Throughout Euro-American centric history, many American Indians were assimilated, persecuted, oppressed, massacred and had their connection to the land severed by being moved to reserves. As a result, many American native tribes today live among Eurocentric Christianity, while keeping their own traditional beliefs, customs and practices. The American Indians were represented or reconstructed not by their own languages but rather by written English through Euro-American perspectives. Because of this, American Indians’ tales could be distorted, or not be authentic. However, from the English texts on the creation myths of two North American native tribes, the Iroquois of the Northeast and the Pima in Arizona, these narratives can be compared to the Bible. Two American Indian tribes’ oral traditions have valuable meaning to study the correlations with: human beings, spirituality, hierarchical order, gender equality, eco-friendly thoughts, etc.