Sherman Alexie

I hope that many of you were fortunate enough to check out Sherman Alexie's lecture on Thursday night. He was hilarious, but he really made some interesting insights, too. I was sitting by Allison at the lecture and at one point Alexie said "That's the oral tradition." Since we are both now students of the oral tradition we took notice and paid closer attention as he continued, "someone tells a story and then the next person tells it wrong and then he tells it wrong and then we have American History". (This was not exactly how lexie phrased it, but, you get the jist) I thought that was hilarious. The oral tradition created history. I totally agree with that and now I wish I had written my term paper about it. I love history but how can we really know what's true and what's not? Although some might get caught up in the "truth" of history, I don't think we have to. At its heart I think that history is just stories. Stories of people and places and events. Early history certainly has imaginative touches. Anone who has read Herodotus would know that! Thank goodness for the oral tradition! Without it, where would we be?