B51 Columbia City, Oregon USA 1867

As one of the deepest layers of human consciousness accessible to objective study, myth is entangled with configurations and codes of historical and symbolic realities that require constant adjusting of conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches.

— Catharine Mason, Clackamas Chinook Performance Art, 2021     

The event of the telling itself may have a certain irony. This is the first myth that Mrs. Howard told Jacobs, and it is about an older woman saying extraordinary things to a younger man, who does not reply with anything of his own, but takes what has been said at face value and acts upon it. I cannot resist the speculation that Mrs. Howard thought it fun to begin with this myth, as a way of alluding to and naming the situation with the earnest young linguist with notebook in hand. Only she would recognize the element of echoic mention in citing her grandmother’s words, and also the attitude in choosing it to tell. The target of that irony of course was not the originator of the words, her grandmother, nor her herself as current performer, but the unsuspecting audience and recorder.

— Dell Hymes, “A Pattern of Verbal Irony in Chinookan,” 1985    

One of the controversies surrounding the achieved body of literature known by its published title, Clackamas Chinook Texts is the individual parceling of an essentially plurivocal tradition. Much like the parceling of community lands that resulted in the selling of tribal properties to non‑Indians, the ethnographical interview resulting in the recording of tribal intangible cultural heritage poses a threat to indigenous traditions. Though this matter is of a universal kind, indigenous peoples do not have the same history or traditions concerning the use of their materials. In the case of the Howard‑Jacobs corpus, the recital of myths outside of the sacred winter season, designated by strict custom for their formal tellings, marks a severe breaking of taboo. The performance of the spirit power songs of others is also viewed as impermissible. Howard was no doubt highly conscious of these taboos as she placed her faith in ethnography as a means of preserving traditional myth forms that she knew would die with her otherwise.

— Catharine Mason, “Poetic Inspiration and the Contextualization of Misunderstanding,” 2017

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