3 Indigenous storytellers on why we tell scary stories
'I love stories because they pull us closer together, especially the scary ones,' says author Richard Van Camp
Indigenous stories often have teachings behind them, and scary ones are no exception, say three storytellers.
Richard Van Camp, who is Tlicho from Fort Smith, N.W.T., has written 30 books in many genres. Two of his most recent are from the horror genre.
Van Camp said traditional storytellers were telling stories to keep children safe, and a lot of the stories youth are told are about respect, empathy, and taking care of themselves.
He said stories about why kids should go home when the street lights turned on were told to keep children safe from things that linger in the dark.
"We were taught, you know, not to look out because you don't know who or what's looking in," he said.
"I close the drapes really early as soon as it gets dark."
Van Camp said that fear can be a teacher, and that used to be a way to teach youth lessons. Van Camp said when your elders are telling you scary stories, it's often coming from a place of love.
"We want to protect our little ones. We want to protect our families, our communities and these are overwhelming and terrifying times," he said.
"I love stories because they pull us closer together, especially the scary ones."
Rueben Martell, a writer, director and producer from Waterhen Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, said stories are meant to teach people lessons, especially stories from lived experience.
Martell said he had an experience during a ceremony when he was young that made him believe in the old stories he was told.
He said there's a problem that people don't hold dear to the stories they were once told anymore, but things do exist from those old stories, and those teachings are being forgotten.
"I know people that love to tell stories," he said.
"Then I know people that don't want to hear because they have separate belief systems now."
He said his own experience taught him empathy.
"Sometimes the monster isn't the bad guy," he said.
"Sometimes the monster is a bad label on someone who's had a rough time and is trying to deal with the situation."
He said most stories are from someone's lived experience, but oftentimes people don't understand that it was a teaching until they've gone through it themselves.
"They need to learn the hard way by not listening to the person that said 'avoid this' or 'don't do that,'" he said.
"I think people need to experience it in order to say, 'I never want to do that again' or 'I should listen.'"
Isaac Murdoch from Serpent River First Nation in northern Ontario said storytelling has been an important way for Indigenous people to teach.
"It was always an accurate way of passing down information from one generation to the next," he said.
He said he once saw a pictograph in northern Saskatchewan of a wolf, a moose, and a man. He asked elders what it meant, and they said it was the creation story for fire. In the Great Lakes area in Ontario, the same pictograph was found.
"These two pictographs were both dated a thousand years apart but the stories that came with them were identical," said Murdoch.
He said that shows how oral history can be passed down over thousands of years without changing.
"The education that our elders teach us is so important and it will teach us how to survive not just the good times but the bad times, the scary times, because those have to come, too," he said.
"That's part of our life."
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