Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation or instilling moral values (sometimes through morals).[1] Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters and narrative point of view. The term “storytelling” can refer specifically to oral storytelling but also broadly to techniques used in other media to unfold or disclose the narrative of a story.
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themselves. By not being given every element of the story, children rely on their own experiences and not formal teaching from adults to fill in the gaps.[51]
When children listen to stories, they periodically vocalize their ongoing attention and accept the extended turn of the storyteller. The emphasis on attentiveness to surrounding events and the importance of oral tradition in indigenous communities teaches children the skill of keen attention. For example, children of the Tohono O’odham people who engaged in more cultural practices were able to recall the events in a verbally presented story better than those who did not engage in cultural practices.[52] Body movements and gestures help to communicate values and keep stories alive for future generations.[53] Elders, parents and grandparents are typically involved in teaching the children the cultural ways, along with history, community values and teachings of the land.[54]
Children in indigenous communities can also learn from the underlying message of a story. For example, in a nahuatl community near Mexico City, stories about ahuaques or hostile water dwelling spirits that guard over the bodies of water, contain morals about respecting the environment. If the protagonist of a story, who has accidentally broken something that belongs to the ahuaque, does not replace it or give back in some way to the ahuaque, the protagonist dies.[55] In this way, storytelling serves as a way to teach what the community values, such as valuing the environment.
Storytelling also serves to deliver a particular message during spiritual and ceremonial functions. In the ceremonial use of storytelling, the unity building theme of the message becomes more important than the time, place and characters of the message. Once the message is delivered, the story is finished. As cycles of the tale are told and retold, story units can recombine, showing various outcomes for a person’s actions.[56]