COYOTE AND GIANTS THAT EAT CHILDREN
Between “Once upon a time and lived happily ever” is the story of our lives, our journey, and our struggle. The stories that we tell to our children may define who we really are more than anything else.
The story about Coyote from the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) people is their message of living life in the middle. The middle place, where we meet ourselves, exposes our true selves. The reason we love the myth, the drama, the movie is that it defines us. Every story has a middle crisis point and, this is the Nimipuu people’s.
Sustaining the children is critical. Giants love eating children. The Nimiipuu knew who they were, giants. There were Giants that came west into the Blue Mountains, and every year ate children. The people were frantic and called upon Coyote for help. Coyote and his friend Fox devised a plan to drown the Giants and with the help of digging animals, created a great Chasm. Holes were dug and copper is placed in them, which then drowns the Giants. Then Coyote makes the Giants into the Seven Devil mountains.
Today Hells Canyon divides Idaho and Oregon with the Seven Devils Mountains on one side and the Blue Mountains on the other. In between are the Cataclysmic rapids on the Salmon River (The River of No Return).
I wonder what the pre-Hells Canyon, pre Seven Devils land looked like. Since the Giants could roam east to west with no restrictions, the area must have been a plane or divided by a small stream. In order to stop the Giants, Coyote had to create a transformation of the land itself. This change came as the Bonneville Ice Dam broke at the end of the last Ice Age, 15,000 BCE. Flood stories abound among the Northwest First Nations. This story highlights desperate people, calling upon their hero, and the hero and his friends make a deep canyon, kill and change the Giants into large mountains. As the story goes on, Coyote collaborates with Fox, then they enlist all the digging animals to create a deep chasm, filled with copper which snares the Giants. Coyote then makes them into the Seven Devils.
Why start with a myth story? Why talking animals and giants? Maybe because they make a lot of money (Disney, Lucas, Marvel)…Or maybe because these stories do more justice in defining us than we know.
Why THIS story? Story is based upon reality. Story defines where we came from and who we are. Story gives meaning to our journey. When we forget our story or others suppress a people’s story through false narratives, people lose their way. Story empowers people. Story also divides people. Story guides people on their journey. When people do not share and remember their story, people, nations, and indeed the entire world suffers. And when the powerful monsters and giants dictate the story, the lives of the oppressed, marginalized, downtrodden are not forgotten.’
I write this story discovering more about myself than the reader may be entertained or enlightened. My self-discovery comes as I realize I misnamed entire people groups that I grew up with and befriended. I called this people group Nez Perce. Did these people call themselves Nez Perce? NO. They defined themselves as “The People,” or Nimiipuu. White men, Europeans called these people NezPerce, because they pierced their noses. Interestingly these people saw Europeans as people with upside-down faces since they were bald on top and had beards on the bottom.
GIANTS ARE EATING CHILDREN TODAY, WHERE IS COYOTE?
Today, Giants eat Children. Physically, emotionally, relationally, in every way imaginable, children are on the menu for the Giants of divorce, poverty, systemic racism, abortion, broken education systems, and disease.
In order to stop the Giants that eat our children, we can follow this myth story’s pattern. Seek help. Collaborate. Enlist others. Finish the work. Create something that lasts for the test of time. Just like the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) needed a hero, we must have heroes. Our heroes are not mythical creatures. Rather, they are regular people who see the need and stand against the Giants. This stand comes with a call to powerful transformation.
CURRENT GIANT THAT IS EATING CHILDREN.
Covid, Delta Variant. Parents or other adults bring home the Virus:
Multiple doctors in the half-dozen children’s hospitals NBC News reached out to said they have seen children infected because a member of their household, often a parent, brings the coronavirus home. Oftentimes, it is because an adult in the home is unvaccinated. “Absolutely, household infections are the beginning of this pandemic, that is a major driving force in the spread of infections. We see it often within households, parents to children,” said Dr. Jim Versalovic, the chief pathologist and interim chief pediatrician at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “We have certainly seen siblings — more than two at times — with an infection at the same time, so spread within households is certainly a very real phenomenon.” “This is not a time for politics, for fighting or threatening lawsuits about masks. Masks save lives. And if you’re a pro-life Louisiana resident like I am, wear your mask.”
Change the landscape. Dig valleys, build mountains, kill the giants that are eating our children. Our heritage, our very livelihood is not measured in whether we have a right to get a shot or wear a mask. Future generations will not judge us by our signs in front of hospitals, saying, “I have the right to not get vaccinated.” No, our children and grandchildren will judge us by how we brought the disease into our own homes, killed our own children. We might be the Giants who Eat our own Children. Time to change is now, not in some future day “someday is not on the calendar.” If not now, when. If not us, who?
Who are the Heros? Parents and other adults who are vaccinated and are wearing masks. Be a Hero, not a Giant that kills children.
Ella E. Clark, Story told by Caleb Whitman, Nez Perce Indian August 1950, Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest, (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. c 1953), pp.47ff
Phil McCausland, Kids Sick with Covid are filling up children’s hospitals in areas seeing spikes, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kids-sick-covid-are-filling-children-s-hospitals-areas-seeing-n1276238 accessed 8–9–2021
Carolyn Smith Morris, Addressing the Epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Cultural Survival, March 6, 2020, https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/addressing-epidemic-missing-murdered-indigenous-women-and-girls
