Creation Stories of the Americas Course Guidebook

faith-and-doubt

• The Popol Vuh is perhaps the richest and most important compendium of Indigenous creation history ever written in the centuries following the Spanish conquest.

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• The ancient Maya believed cenotes were places where the rain god Chaak lived—a deity celebrated not only in the Yucatán but across the Maya region.

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mortality

• The capacocha was the sacred Inca ritual involving the offering of the finest male and female youth to serve as intercessors between humans and creation gods.

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• Water can represent the grace of certain creation deities and other supernaturals, as well as their wrath—a protector and great sustainer of life, but also its destroyer.

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belonging

• Anansi stories were told by slaves who brought their West and Central African creation epics with them; the trickster served to strengthen the resolve of the oppressed.

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• Indigenous futurism focuses on the power and agency Indigenous Americans have in creating new futures, even out of destruction and devastation.

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