Stories Help Us Know How to Be with Dennis Fox Jr.

Charlie asked me here to talk about societies and there’s that learning and storytelling brings to mind that there are societies other than what i mentioned the black mouth the antelope society and crazy dog society that there were level levels of societies or age societies people call them and you’re learning or you’re becoming a adult so to speak we’re always kind of put in place as a young man i’ll talk about a young man rather than a young woman but as a young man you’re trying to achieve kind of some position in society that helps you impress the young lady so to speak and some of those societies would require certain types of tasks that be done in like in the first society that would you were able to enter would be the that stonehammer society that was for young men and really didn’t have an age on it just when you were able to achieve a warrior status and usually that meant and at that time meant stealing horses from another camp or counting coup on somebody or on going out and scouting and seeing that there’s a war party near and letting the village know that you’re that you’re kind of trying to achieve kind of a warrior status and so there’s different levels or different societies that go all the way up there’s a lot of stories that go with them there’s a lot of a lot of learning stories and about when you go out and you’re thinking about girls you shouldn’t be doing that if you’re doing this if you’re hunting and you know and um so that uh and i don’t want to tell the stories coming right now but there’s a lot of next guy coming in could probably tell a lot of them stories but you hear him and my growing up i had a lot of uncles my dad had a lot of brothers and and they would tell me stories and how i was supposed to act and even my aunties would tell me stories of how to act and behave and as becoming a man and such and then there’s stories that pertain to who you are and what’s out there and what sort of beings can mess with you and take you off track and um those that keep you on track and what you’re supposed to do and um there’s thousands of stories and i know a hopi guy he used to tell stories left and right this hopi guy and he said i’d have to put him away in the kiva i know all them stories but i’d have to put everyone away in the kiva and i don’t know they must do that in the earth lodge here kind of to tell stories they must put them away in the earth lodge and tell them i can’t recall stories like some people can they’re just sharp like that and tell stories just the way they’re supposed to be told and when i tell stories i’d leave a whole part out and then i realized like whole two days later usually i left out a part so i’m not really good at storytelling but it’s essential to the upbringing of young people and maintaining our ways and culture