Karuk texts and recordings by Karuk language masters and apprentices.
Tan Oak Girl Story
As originally told by Nettie Reuben
Audio Recorded by Julian Lang, December 2 2023. Format: Mp3.
Tan Oak Girl Story provides a glimpse of Pikvahahirak, the Time Before Humans. A short creation story it provides us with a good lesson on creation stories, and to what they are capable. The story says there is a before-time prior to Human Beings coming into existence. It suggests that those prior beings left this place to another place.
The story tells us that the prior beings wove baskets like our people do today. The very words and thoughts of the prior beings are related to us. The prior beings spoke our language–which means, in turn, we are speaking their language.
We, today, may be unaware, or we may have not been told of how our creation stories are a kind of food, sustenance for our souls and spirits. Wrapped up in this brief story is something that is special to us, as people, áraar, and must be protected as a result. There is much to gain by looking at this short, sweet little story about one of our best foods, tan oak acorns, and consider them as the gift to Human Beings from a the young girl who was called Xuntápan. If we turn off all the online distractions, all of the electricity, all of the pressure of our everyday lives, and consider for a moment that there was a moment when an Ikxaréeyav girl, a spirit-being, knowing full well that she was leaving this world for another place, that this Ikxaréeyav girl gave to us the tan oak acorn.
The role of creation stories to us today is embodied in this little story of 12 lines. We must discover our own paths to the source of its meaning. It may be small, but as our Australian aboriginal people remind us: from little things big things grow.
GO TO STORY: http://institutesofnativeknowledge.org/tan-oak-story/