Bird Legends & Indigenous People
There are some good websites hosted by native cultural centers that have legends about birds and the relationship of the people to birds. A few of these resources are listed here. The first two sites are from teaching modules that focus on Indian education. There are some excellent resources here! REVIEW 3-4 of the stories listed below (most are very short!).
- Indian Reading Series: Stories and Legends of the Northwest
- Why Bluejay Hops Reading (pdf)
- Eldrbarry’s Raven Tales: This website is all about the Pacific Northwest peoples and Raven stories.
- Eldrbarry’s Raven Story Screen: The Story Screen is a colorful backdrop designed and made for Raven Stories in 1990. It consists of three fabric panels on frames – together they make a nine by seven foot screen. Similar backdrops were used by Native American storytellers in the Pacific Northwest. It helps provide the atmosphere of the longhouse with its carvings. Descriptions of the various characters portrayed follow.
- The Background of the Raven Stories
- Raven finds the First Men
- Raven and the Man that sits on the tides
- Traditional Stories from the Cherokee Nation
- Native American Legends from First People
Many cultures have used birds for a variety of purposes. For one example, refer to the article “Traditional use of the Andean flicker (Colaptes rupicola) as a galactagogue in the Peruvian Andes” from the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine.
