Nanabozho learned survival and ethics by copying animals’ own practices and standards

Evidence

Following the Original Instructions, Benton-Banai recounts that Nanabozho also had the task to learn how to live from his elder brothers and sisters. When he needed food, he noticed what the animals were eating and copied them. Heron taught him to gather wild rice. One night by the creek, he saw a little ring-tailed animal carefully washing his food with delicate hands. He thought, “Ahh, I am supposed to put only clean food in my body.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 756

Categorization

• FICTION: The myth pattern — encountering an animal doing a subtle right thing and adopting it as an ethic — is reusable as a story beat in eco-fiction.
• XREF: connects to: A traditional Nanabozho story teaches never to take more than you need — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 639