Indigenous storytelling develops creative and metaphoric thinking capacities across the lifespan.

Evidence

Indigenous education imparted an awareness of story that provided a context through which imagination and the unconscious could develop at all stages of life. Indeed, Indigenous storytelling engaged all levels of higher order creative thinking and imaging capacities. Indigenous storytelling developed a fluency of metaphoric thinking and mythic sensibility that served Indigenous people in their understanding of their own psychology and maintenance of their spiritual ecology … The basis of traditional Indian education is embodied in the structures of thinking related to the creative process were engendered as a part of Indigenous storying. These disciplines were attention, creative imagination, flexibility and fluency of thinking. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1602

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the polyad thread on listening/observation-as-method and to ch10’s argument that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured. — connects to: Apache moral education works by encoding ethical lessons into place-based stories told as needed. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1598; Cultural adaptation fosters chronic multi-perspective awareness that raises creativity. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2230; A culturally evolved tool can restructure an individual’s mental capacities — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 747 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural adaptation fosters chronic multi-perspective awareness that raises creativity. #corroborates (0.82) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2230
• Language preserves fossilized worldviews within its living metaphors #corroborates (0.78) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1599
• Root metaphors combine into culturally inherited discourses and discursive practices #expands (0.75) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 525
• Broadening participation validates diverse cultural ways of knowing the land #corroborates (0.74) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 335
• A culturally evolved tool can restructure an individual’s mental capacities #expands (0.72) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 747