Wednesday, April 11, 2012

sky twins

In this story, we learned about how the Sky Woman ignored the first twin and he wound up wandering, uncared for, until he found his father. The Cloud Man cared for and taught Tharonhyawa:kon all the things the Creator wanted him to know. When he returned home, he discovered that Atsytsyakayon has died, and he fought with Shawiskara about what to do with her body. (He wanted to bury her in the earth like she had done for her daughter, but his brother wanted to take her to the edge of the earth and kick her body into the sea.) Zoo Boy drew this struggle in his story drawing below.



While they were struggling, the Sky Woman's head flew off her body and into the sky, and there became Grandmother Moon. (J is particularly delighting in these "this is how that was created" tales.) Then the brothers set about creating all the resources of the earth -- Tharonhyawa:kon creating all the nice, peaceful things like gentle deer, flat rolling lands, straight calm rivers, and tall reaching trees, while his brother Shawiskara created violent things like mountain lions to eat the deer, steep craggy mountains, moving the rivers to the tops of mountains to crash down in water falls, and bending and twisting the branches of trees. In the end, there was great beauty in all the parts of nature, and the earth was in balance. J drew this balanced world, with the twins standing side-by-side viewing their creations, in his drawing, which is at the top of this post. (This and his previous drawing of the Sky Daughter story are two of my very favorites of his to date, he is truly capturing the feel and importance of each of the stories with his work these days.)


J's story summary above, Zoo Boy's below. Zoo Boy learned a lesson about planning, he ran out of room to write his full story summary and had to cut it shorter than he'd planned.


I liked the lesson my boys drew from this story: both commented that even though Shawiskara was trying to be "mean" by creating problem things, in the end his creations were every bit as beautiful and important to the world as Tharonhyawa:kon's. There's a powerful wisdom gained with that insight, and Zoo Boy in particular seemed to feel very empowered by that message.

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