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Ma'ii Joldlooshi la' Eeya': The Several Lives of a Navajo Coyote |
| Section: CULTURE / FOLK WISDOM--TRICKSTER MYTHOLOGY FROM AROUND THE WORLD |
| Author: Barre Toelken |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 4/1/1990 |
| Size: 4,421 Words, 25,195 Characters |
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Most Navajo coyote tales begin with the deceptively simple statement Ma'll joldlooshi la eeya, which is the Navajo rhetorical equivalent of "Once upon a time," although it cultural implications are far more complex.
Ma'll is Coyote, the central character in a great range of stories told primarily in the wintertime by Navajo parents to their families. So potentially powerful are these stories and their main character that their performance is dictated by larger, universal forces: The stories are told between the first killing frost in autumn and the first thunderstorm in spring. The name Ma'll is actually the personification of a whole genre of animals - the canine family - and is said by some Navajos to be based on the word ma', which describes the way dogs poke their noses into ev...
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...rom the Pueblos), have now encountered a world of values in which their negative Coyote has free run of the stage and control of the spotlights, while their positive Ma'ii has been relegated to children's books anthropologists. What an irony for them (and an embarrassment for us) that the world that now surrounds them has made their darkest fears more real than they ever could have imagined.
(806 of 25,195 characters)
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