The Intersection of Karuk Storytelling and Education

of going to a tree, they’re going to a lake. When they arrive, the older brother submerges
himself in the water for five days, interacts with the Long Snake, apsuunxára, and on the
way back down the hill wealth flocks to him. (17-18) He has achieved the purpose of his
mission: fuller integration into the High Dance or World Renewal culture.
The story of Sregon Jim’s great-grandfather begins with his annual summer
training on a nearby mountain peak. Whereas the young man from Aftaram in Phoebe
Maddox’s story was swallowed up by an apsuunxára and given good-luck all at once
over a period of five days, it took Sregon Jim’s ancestor “many summers” make his
breakthrough. (68) This calls attention to Buckley’s observation that some people make a
breakthrough that constitutes “a powerfully transformative experience or realization as a
result of training.” (2002, 123) But it also calls to mind the opposite, that Buckley
observes on the next page, that “some people say that a trained man’s transformation
characteristically occurs slowly and almost of itself.” (124) While both stories cited here
involve ascension into the High Country, where the subject interacts directly with
Ikxaréeyavs, and the results allow him to participate more fully in the High Dance
culture, the specifics of each case are individual. This holds true with other historic and
contemporary accounts of mountain training, as well as with the basic assertion of classic
Káruk education: that every person came here for an individual purpose, and it is their
responsibility to find out what that purpose is and to pursue it. Note that while the young
man from Aftaram has the support of his brother, he dives into the lake alone.
In this, albeit cursory, survey of classic Káruk education we see that storytelling
serves to create examples of how to live, but not manual-like instructions. Education is
the student’s own responsibility, a process of self-discovery within the High Dance social
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