The Peoples’ Stories
Their stories, mythology and history: how each people says the world began, its powers and figures, its sacred things, and the stories each GriotsWell World Story World is built from. This is the base of everything on GriotsWell.
Akan peoples — Ashanti, Fante, Akyem, Akuapem, Kwahu — Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire
The First Nations of Australia whose Country the songlines cross — many distinct nations, each with its own language, Country, Law and Dreaming. Among them: the Anangu (Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara), Martu and Ngaanyatjarra peoples of the Western Desert, whose custodians have shared the public story of the Seven Sisters songline, and the Yolŋu of north-east Arnhem Land.
Ancient Egyptian civilization — Nile Valley from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean Delta
The Arabic and Persian storytellers of Baghdad, Cairo and the Persian lands, drawing on older Indian story-frames, whose tales flowed together into the great compilation of the Thousand and One Nights — a cross-cultural masterwork of nested storytelling.
Babylonian civilization — Akkadian-speaking, central Mesopotamia
BaKongo peoples — Kongo, Vili, Yombe, Woyo, Solongo — of the Congo River Basin, spanning the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Angola (Cabinda), and Gabon. The Kingdom of Kongo was one of Central Africa's great states from the 14th century.
Chinese literary tradition — the classical poetics of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), the golden age of Chinese poetry, and the qǐchéngzhuǎnhé four-part structure that shaped its regulated verse.
Chinese literary tradition — the wuxia genre of martial heroes, rooted in classical tales of chivalrous swordsmen (youxia) and the great vernacular novels, and flourishing in modern literature and film.
The nations whose medicine wheels and four-directions teachings carry the circular story: the Crow (Apsáalooke), whose Burnt Face is told with the Bighorn Medicine Wheel; the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi), whose elders carry the teachings of the four directions; and the Plains and Woodland Cree. Each nation holds its own teachings.
The Desana (Wira) and their Tukanoan neighbours of the Vaupés (Uaupés) river — the Tukano, the Barasana and others — of Colombia and Brazil, whose healers, the kumu and the payé, carry the vision journey. The Yanomami of the highlands between Brazil and Venezuela, whose shamans travel with the xapiri spirits, hold a vision tradition of their own.
Diné (Navajo) people — Diné Bikéyah, the Navajo homeland in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado), within the four sacred mountains.
Dogon people — Bandiagara Escarpment, Mali, West Africa
The European/American dramatic and narrative tradition — a refinement of the classic linear arc that treats the midpoint as an act break, dividing the long middle into two escalating movements.
The European/American storytelling-craft tradition — a modern structural framework that plots a story through seven key points, designed from the ending backward, with the resolution as the mirror-opposite of the hook.
The European/American comparative-mythology and craft tradition — the monomyth Joseph Campbell set out in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) from his study of the world's mythologies, carried into film and fiction by the screen-craft teachers who followed.
The European/American dramatic and narrative tradition — rooted in classical Greek dramatic theory (Aristotle's Poetics), developed through the European stage and the novel, and codified in modern screenwriting and craft.
Finnish and Karelian peoples — Finno-Ugric tradition
Guaraní peoples — Mbyá, Ava (Ñandeva), Kaiowá, and Paĩ Tavyterã — of Paraguay, southern Brazil, northeastern Argentina, and Bolivia. A major Indigenous nation of South America with a profound spiritual and poetic tradition.
Haudenosaunee (the "People of the Longhouse," also known as the Iroquois Confederacy) — the Mohawk (Kanien'kehá:ka), Oneida (Onʌyoteʼá·ka), Onondaga (Onöñda'gega'), Cayuga (Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ'), Seneca (Onöndowa'ga:'), and later the Tuscarora (Ska:rù:rę') — of what is now upstate New York and the surrounding Great Lakes and St. Lawrence regions.
The voyaging peoples of the Pacific — Hawaiian (Kānaka Maoli), Tahitian (Mā'ohi), Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Marquesan and others, each with its own language and tellings — master voyagers who settled the Pacific across immense distances by non-instrument navigation.
Sanskrit literary and religious tradition — attributed to the sage Vyasa, compiled from older oral tradition roughly 400 BCE–400 CE, pan-Indian in reach and influence.
The Quechua-speaking Inca of Cusco and the peoples of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca realm, who used the quipu — an elaborate system of knotted, colored cords — to record numbers, information, and (in ways still being understood) narrative and account.
The Indian (Sanskrit) dramatic and aesthetic tradition — the theory of rasa articulated in the Natyashastra (the ancient Sanskrit treatise on dramaturgy attributed to Bharata Muni) and developed across Indian poetics, drama, dance, and music.
East Asian literary tradition — originating in classical Chinese poetics (qǐ chéng zhuǎn hé) and developed in Japanese narrative, poetry, and art as kishōtenketsu.
Japanese aesthetic and artistic tradition — developed across Noh theatre, ink painting (sumi-e), poetry, garden design, and music, and rooted in Zen and older Japanese sensibility.
Javanese peoples — the island of Java, Indonesia, in a tradition synthesizing indigenous Javanese cosmology, Hindu-Buddhist epic (the Ramayana and Mahabharata, adapted into Javanese forms), and later Islamic and Sufi elements.
The K'iche' Maya of highland Guatemala, whose sacred book the Popol Vuh preserves the creation cycle; and the broader Maya world.
K'iche' Maya peoples of the Guatemalan highlands, heirs to the broader Classic Maya civilization; the Popol Vuh preserves the sacred narrative of the K'iche', written down in the mid-16th century from far older tradition.
Yamato Japanese peoples — the Kojiki ("Record of Ancient Matters") compiled in 712 CE by Ō no Yasumaro from older oral tradition, drawing on myths far predating writing in Japan.
Korean peoples — the pansori tradition flowered under the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), with roots in shamanic (mudang) ritual song, developing especially in the southwestern Jeolla region.
The Lakota (the Titonwan bands) and the Dakota (Santee, Yankton and the other bands) of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ — sovereign nations whose vision seeking is a living sacred ceremony. Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa, Santee Dakota) described the hambeday in his own voice in The Soul of the Indian (1911).
The Lakota — the Titonwan (Teton) bands, Oglala, Sicangu, Hunkpapa and the others, of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (the Seven Council Fires) — for whom the sacred hoop and the four directions carry deep meaning. The sacred specifics belong to the living Lakota and are kept by them.
The Mandé peoples — Mandinka (Maninka), Bambara and Dyula — of the old Mali Empire: Mali, Guinea, Senegal, the Gambia, Burkina Faso
Mandinka, Bambara, Dyula peoples — Mali Empire and successor states
Mbuti (Ituri Forest, Democratic Republic of Congo), Baka (Cameroon, Central African Republic, northern Congo, Gabon), Aka (western Congo Basin), Efé and Twa peoples — the hunter-gatherer forest peoples of the Central African rainforest. Distinct peoples with distinct languages, united by a shared relationship to the forest as living parent.
Mbuti, Baka, Aka, Efé and related forest peoples of the Congo Basin (the Ituri forest and the wider equatorial rainforest of Central Africa).
Māori — the Indigenous Polynesian people of Aotearoa (New Zealand), organized in iwi (tribes) and hapū (sub-tribes), descendants of the Polynesian voyagers who arrived by waka (canoe).
The Mexica (Aztec) and wider Nahua peoples of central Mexico, and the broader Mesoamerican codex tradition (Mixtec and others) — makers of the painted books (amoxtli) that recorded history, calendar, cosmology, and sacred knowledge.
Zulu (amaZulu), Xhosa (amaXhosa), Swazi (emaSwati), and Ndebele (amaNdebele) — the Nguni-speaking peoples of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, Eswatini, and surrounding regions of southern Africa.
Dinka and Nuer of South Sudan, Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, Acholi of northern Uganda and South Sudan — Nilotic peoples of the East African savannah and the Nile Basin, defined by a profound relationship with cattle.
Norse peoples — the medieval Icelanders and the wider Scandinavian world, heirs to the Viking Age, who preserved the sagas and the Eddic mythology.
The Pawnee (Chaui, Kitkehahki, Pitahawirata and Skidi), whose animal lodges, the nahurac, gave the people their teachings, and whose Dun Horse guides a poor boy to honour; and the Blackfoot (Siksiká, Kainai and Piikani), whose Scarface is shown the way to the Sun by the animals. Each nation holds its own stories and teachings.
San — the Ju/'hoansi (!Kung), the Taa-speaking !Xóõ, the /Xam, the Naro and other San peoples of the Kalahari and southern Africa
Slavic peoples — the East Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians), West Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Sorbs), and South Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, and others), sharing a common pre-Christian mythological and folkloric heritage.
Sufi Islamic mystical tradition — centered on Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–1273), who lived and taught in Konya (in present-day Turkey), wrote in Persian, and whose followers founded the Mevlevi Order (the "whirling dervishes").
Sumerian civilization — the city-states of Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Nippur, Eridu — of southern Mesopotamia (modern southern Iraq), roughly 3000–1750 BCE, and the Akkadian and Babylonian cultures who inherited and transmitted their literature.
The Tagalog, Visayan (Bisaya, including the Sulodnon of Panay), Ilocano, Bikolano, Kapampangan and other peoples of the Philippine archipelago, whose cosmology centres on Bathala, the diwata and anito, and the babaylan who mediate between the worlds.
Tamil peoples — Tamilakam (the ancient Tamil country of southern India and Sri Lanka), during the Sangam age (roughly 300 BCE–300 CE), under the Chera, Chola, and Pandya dynasties.
Chinese Taoist tradition — Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou, c. 369–286 BCE) and Laozi (traditionally 6th century BCE), of the Warring States period of ancient China.
The Trobriand Islanders of Kiriwina and the other Massim island peoples of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea, whose Kula exchange ties island to island; with the feast-giving and the earned leadership of the 'big man' that peoples of the Papua New Guinea Highlands and the Solomon Islands also know. Melanesia's peoples are many — more than 800 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea alone — and each holds its own traditions.
Bantu-speaking peoples — Zulu (umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu), Xhosa, Ndebele, Shona (hunhu), Sotho (botho), Tswana, Swazi, Venda, Tsonga — Southern Africa
Celtic peoples — the Irish (Gaelic) and Welsh (Brythonic) traditions above all, heirs to a rich mythological and storytelling heritage preserved in the medieval manuscripts.
Yoruba peoples — Oyo, Egba, Ijebu, Ile-Ife, Ekiti, Ijesa, Igbomina — southwestern Nigeria and Benin Republic.
Zapotec peoples — Oaxaca Valley; Monte Albán civilization