She was of a generation, the last generation here at Laguna, that passed down an entire culture by word of mouth, an entire history, an entire vision of the world which depended upon memory and retelling by subsequent generations.
The importance of oral tradition to preserve the culture of a people. The narrator shows how oral tradition was passed by word of mouth from one generation to another.
As with any generation, the oral tradition depends upon each person listening and remembering a portion and it is together all of us remembering what we heard together…
The narrator shows that oral tradition is cumulative. It is a summation of what everyone in a particular culture has been told.
They were called the Wagon People because they had no place anymore.
The narrator sympathizes with the people that were kicked out of Oklahoma because they had intermarried with the local Indians. Their land was possessed by the white people that were participating in the Oklahoma land rush.
I don’t have to go. What they tell in stories was real only back then, back in time immemorial, like they say.
The narrator was alluding to the story of the Yellow Woman who had been kidnapped by spirits and returned home. This was because she was living with a stranger she had met in the woods.
Earth is your mother, she holds you,
The sky is your father, he protects you
Ayah sings the lullaby to console herself when her two children were taken from her in a government car. She sings the lullaby that her mother and grandmother had sung to her when she was a child.
