Tellings from Our Elders

Oral stories form a portal through which rich cultural and linguistic information is passed from generation to generation. Tellings from Our Elders, Volume 2, presents stories in the Skagit Valley dialects of Lushootseed, the language of the indigenous people of the southern and eastern shores of Puget Sound. Transcribed from recordings made of the last generation of elders who learned Lushootseed as an exclusive mother tongue, and published with line-by-line interlinear glosses, this collection of nine traditional stories (syəyəhub) opens a doorway to cultural knowledge, specialized vocabulary, and patterns of narrative stylistics typical of Coast Salish storytelling.