Earthdivers : Tribal Narratives on Mixed Descent

In traditional tribal creation myths, the earthdiver brings up dirt from the primal water to form the earth. The contemporary earthdivers in this collection of stories are mixed bloods, in the author's words "the mournful and whimsical heirs and survivors from that premier union between the daughters of the woodland shamans and white fur traders." Now they dive in un-known urban areas connecting dreams to earth in the same way that these stories connect metaphor to realities. Scholars have defined Indian identities that are meaningful to outsiders but they are unable to explain the intuitive oral tradition of tribal consciousness. These stories attempt to convey a sense of that tradition.