Editing Salishan oral narratives (section)

==Genres==
Many Salishan peoples distinguish between two basic genres of narrative, one is traditional stories corresponding roughly to what is called myth in English and which takes place in a Myth Age before the arrival of the modern age, in which plants, animals and weather phenomena are anthropomorphized. The other type of stories includes historical accounts and "news" or informational stories. For the [[Nlaka'pamux]] of the [[Fraser Canyon]]-[[Nicola Valley|Nicola]] regions in British Columbia, the genre of traditional narrative is called ''{{IPA|sptékʷɬ}}'' whereas the informational narrative is called ''spíləẋm'', in [[Montana Salish language|Montana Salish (Flathead)]] the distinction is between ''sqʷlú(ṁt)'' and ''sṁiʔṁíy'', and other Salishan languages have similar pairs. {{sfn|Thompson|Egesdal|2008|p=xxx}}

One important difference between Salishan oral traditions and Western literature is that Salishan traditional narratives are not considered to be fictive, or to be the result of the creativity of the narrator, rather they are considered to convey real knowledge of the world as passed down from the elders. The storyteller also does not "own" the story, although the best storytellers do give the narratives a personal flavor. Rather the stories are considered to be pre-existing and to contain all the knowledge of the world.  Demonstrating the significance of the traditional narratives, elder Joe Cullooyah of the Montana Salish stated that "Everything you need to know about life is in the Coyote stories — if you just listen carefully", and asked what happened to Coyote of the [[Coyote in mythology|Coyote narratives]], Cullooyah answered "You believe that Christ is coming back some day, right? Well, Coyote is coming back some day, too." {{sfn|Thompson|Egesdal|2008|pp=xxx-xxxii}}