Storytelling, Knowledge, and Culture Theme Analysis

Night Flying Woman suggests that traditional stories are important in Native American culture because they pass on indigenous knowledge. The story’s protagonist, a young Ojibway child named Oona, learns many traditional stories from her grandfather, grandmother, and elderly people in her community, including an old woman named A-wa-sa-si. Oona’s elders believe that these stories will teach Oona valuable life lessons, including practical skills like using medicinal herbs, cultural values like the importance of community, and spiritual beliefs like maintaining a deep connection with the land. Throughout her life, Oona weathers many hardships—including displacement, poverty, and cultural upheaval—as white settlers seize North American land and force Native Americans onto reservations. Nonetheless, the skills and wisdom that Oona learns from traditional stories help her to survive. As an old woman, Oona’s dying wish is to pass on her stories, so that her culture’s wisdom won’t be lost. Storytelling’s important role in Oona’s life stresses how valuable it is to Ojibway culture: it’s a mechanism for preserving indigenous wisdom, including life lessons, practical skills, and cultural beliefs. 

The elderly people in Oona’s community place great emphasis on telling Oona stories from their culture and encouraging her to memorize them so that she can pass them on, suggesting that such stories contain valuable information that the Ojibway want to preserve. After A-wa-sa-si tells Oona stories about the forest, Oona reflects that “I know that I have been honored by being told these words. I shall repeat them many times,” showing that she not only recognizes the stories’ importance, but also recognizes a duty to memorize them so that she can pass them on someday. Although the stories tell tales about things like “why the rabbit traded his tail to the chipmunk,” they actually communicate “the beliefs, the customs, and the practices of [Ojibway] people,” meaning that the stories are metaphorical (or allegorical) narratives containing indigenous knowledge. For example, Oona’s descendent (and narrator) Ignatia remarks that “Ojibway tales teach a philosophy for living. They tell of the purity of man and nature and keeping them in balance.” Ignatia suggests that Ojibway stories communicate important Ojibway values (like keeping the ecosystem in balance to ensure that resources remain abundant in the long term). As an old woman, Oona worries that if no children come to hear her pass on the stories, then Ojibway “history will be lost,” reinforcing the idea that the stories contain important cultural knowledge. Similarly, Ignatia explains that Ojibway stories “tell what must be passed on so that our ways will be known to the Ojibway children of the future”—showing that, generations later, the stories still function as important learning tools that communicate Ojibway knowledge, history, and values. 

When the Ojibway people move to reservations and adopt a new lifestyle based on white settler culture, they find that the values and skills they’ve learned from traditional stories end up sustaining them, suggesting that such stories—and the indigenous knowledge they contain—are essential to the Ojibway’s survival, even in unfamiliar circumstances. At the beginning of the book, Ignatia says that many Native Americans ask, “What good are these tales in today’s world?” This suggests that many people fail to look past the stories’ surface, assuming they’re not useful or relevant for their evolving lives. In telling Oona’s life story, however, Ignatia reveals that her ancestors only survived by relying on the values and skills they learned from indigenous stories, which suggests that the stories are, in fact, valuable and relevant—even in new situations. Government food and medicine rations are scarce on the reservation, so Oona’s family survives by leaning on skills they’ve learned from traditional stories, like “making the maple sugar, cutting the birch bark, and digging the medicinal herbs.” Oona reflects that “Even in today’s world, these things are necessary for us to survive.” Even in unfamiliar territory with scarce resources, they know how to sustain themselves, based on the knowledge passed on through the stories. This suggests that survival tools are embedded within traditional stories, making such stories not just relevant but crucial. Several generations later, Ignatia explains that the values she learned from traditional stories continue to sustain her people, enabling them to survive hard times in urban society. Informed by traditional stories that celebrate sharing, Ignatia shares her home and salary with other Ojibway people, enabling struggling Ojibway people to forge informal support networks that help them survive off the reservation. Ignatia concludes that it’s “important that you learn the past and act accordingly, for that will assure us that we will always people the earth.” She thinks that the indigenous knowledge contained in traditional stories will continue to remain relevant and ensure her people’s survival, no matter what circumstances they face in the future. This suggests that indigenous stories have ongoing value, prompting the reader to recognize their importance and perhaps even embrace their wisdom.