een to gradually transform the individual from a “random” animated carbon formation into a fully developed human being, an integral “actor” invested with meaning and purpose, who would walk softly on the earth and work collaboratively to ensure the sustenance of a healthy, productive life for every member of his/her immediate community and the greater community to which we all belong. The process of becoming, then, is inextricably bound up in and beholden to Story. After all, Story constitutes a container for our lives, or as Kiowa novelist and scholar N. Scott Momaday articulated it two generations ago: “We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best 1 The practice of introducing the Indigenous “actors” who play their parts within this project by tribal affiliation may seem unusual (or even superfluous) to those who may not be familiar with Indigenous thought and writings. There are several reasons for so doing, however, some of which I hope will clearly manifest themselves in the course of the work itself. For now, suffice it to say, it is important to remind ourselves that while the works and words of one tribal artist or scholar may inform the lives, words and works of others, these words and works belong to the cultural canon and speak to, from and of a tribal lifeway belonging to a specific nation. And the practice of identifying specific nations with specific ideas, stories or lifeways prevents confusion and/or the dissolution of that
this whole thing about being is imagining and creating and being will help with my myth essay