Make Prayers to the Raven Quotes

“And we might also give thought to the legacy that they have created, by which the people continue to live today. What is this legacy? We often remember ancient or traditional cultures for the monuments they have left behind--the megaliths of Stonehenge, the temples of Bangkok, the pyramids of Teotihuacán, the great ruins of Machu Picchu. People like the Koyukon have created no such monuments, but they have left something that may be unique- greater and more significant as a human achievement. This legacy is the vast land itself, enduring and essentially unchanged despite having supported human life for countless centuries. Koyukon people and their ancestors, bound to a strict code of morality governing their behavior toward nature, have been the land's stewards and caretakers. Only because they have nurtured it so well does this great legacy of land exist today. Here, perhaps, is the greatest wisdom in a world that Raven made.”
― Richard K. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest

“Aside from their spiritual significance, perhaps the voices of the little birds mean most to the Koyukon people. Indeed, these provide inspiration for their own spring and summer songs (too k'ileek, literally "water songs, because water is the warm-season metaphor). Many bird calls are interpreted as Koyukon words, their meanings derived from events in the Distant Time, events recalled in stories that make the birds' phrases clear. What is striking about these song words is how perfectly they mirror the call's pattern, so that someone who knows birdsongs can readily identify the species when the words are spoken in Koyukon. Not only the rhythm comes through, but also some of the tone, the "feel" that goes with it.”
― Richard K. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest

“They perceive artistic elegance in the form of the land and living things, much the same as in our Western tradition. This sensitivity toward natural design is quite outside the pragmatism that might dominate the lives of people subsisting directly from wild resources. Koyukon people often comment that a day or a scene is particularly beautiful, and they are attentive to fleeting moments mountains outlined against the sky, reflections on still water, a bird's song in the quietness. In their language, words like nizoonh ("pretty") or hutaadla'o ("beautiful) communicate these feelings. This is not a new way of seeing, as the ancient riddles and the statements of elders indicate.

A man spent several minutes describing a particular midwinter sunset, its color glowing on the frozen river and the snow-covered mountainside, snow on the trees reflecting amber, and long shadows cast by timber on the slopes. He said his wife had called him out so he could see it, and he stood a long time watching. Both he and his wife are old, and he says that the oldest people during his childhood had this same admiration for beauty.”
― Richard K. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest

“For seven months each year, the subarctic environment is transformed by a gift (or perhaps some would say a curse) of the weather. This, of course, is snow. By midwinter the land is covered by soft powder lying two to six feet deep in the forest, hardened to dunelike drifts on the broad lakes and rivers, creating a nivean world of its own. The coming of snow is forecast by many signs… When the sky is bright orange at sunrise there will be snow, "usually two mornings later." Perhaps the best sign of snow is a moondog, a luminous circle around a bright winter moon. When the Koyukon speak of it, they say, "the moon pulls his (parka] ruff around his face," as if he is telling them that snow is coming soon.

The Koyukon people regard snow as an elemental part of their world, much like the river, the air, or the sun. It can be a great inconvenience at times, but mostly it is a benefit. Without snow, the ease and freedom of winter travel would be lost, the movements of animals would not be faithfully recorded, the winter darkness would be far deeper, and the quintessential beauty of the world would be lessened. I never heard Koyukon people complain about snow, even when it stubbornly refused to melt away in late spring.”
― Richard K. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest

“Large rivers are by far the most significant bodies of water for the Koyu-kon, whose villages and camp are situated along them, and whose group identity derives from them. The entire Koyukon system of geographic orientation is based on rivers, not on the compass points used by Westerners. The four cardinal directions and modifiers for intermediate points are used mainly with reference to the wind. Direction and distance on land are reckoned by a complex of terms meaning upriver, downriver, toward the river, away from the river, and across the river. Four prefixes measure distance for each term: dodot means nearby downriver, aadot and nodot move farther away downriver, and yoodot is a great distance downriver. Other features are also described by reference to the large rivers-for example, a lake has a shore toward the river, a shore away from the river, and upriver and downriver shores. I was often confused by the Koyukon people's way of orienting themselves by river current, because I was raised to think in terms of cardinal directions. Huslia people talk of going "up” to Fairbanks, for instance, because it is upstream from the mouth of the Koyukuk River. But Fairbanks is southeast of Huslia, so I considered it "over" or "down," certainly not "up." When Koyukon friends visited my home on a long, narrow inlet in southeast Alaska, they were constantly disoriented by the changing tidal current, which made "upstream" become "downstream" every six hours!”
― Richard K. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest

“The subarctic world of the Koyukon is dominated by physical forces that may be incomprehensible to an inexperienced outsider. If the spiritual powers of this environment seem ethereal, its physical powers are the opposite. The land itself is massive, both in its extent and in the amplitude of its up-thrown mountains. Great rivers carve the terrain, running each spring with a chaos of fractured ice, periodically spilling over their banks to submerge the flats and make islands of the hills. The summer day lasts for months yet is too short against winter's darkness. And finally the weather, the omnipotent cold, the snow and storms, and the brief summer heat, when forests are set afire by passing thunderstorms.”
― Richard K. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest