Looking for Nisqually Legends & Folklore

[omenseer]

Hello all. I am running a back up game set in Olympia, WA. The local indigenous people are the Nisqually and I wanted to feature figures and echoes of their stories in the game. However finding their specific stories has proven difficult.

Do any of you know of good online sources or am I going to have to stick the wider Coast Salish stories? I mean I know the Nisqually are part of that group, but I figured they would have their own variants t other stories as well as their own particular stories.

[omenseer]

On the topic of academic works, there's a slim but non-zero chance you might be able to find something in the International Conference on Salishan and Neighboring Languages archives (link here: https://lingpapers.sites.olt.ubc.ca/icsnl-volumes/). Once in a while you'll get papers that are primarily just recorded narratives in there for corpus linguistics purposes. As an aside, anyone with a linguistics background should also love this link, as Salishan languages have a lot of interesting stuff going on with them!

I have to say, though, the best approach would probably be to approach the tribe directly to find resources. For one, the tribe naturally will know better than anyone else, and on top of that the peoples here in the Northwest have ancient and strong traditions of systems of familial ownership over cultural heritage (for example, names and specific dances can be inherited within families as a form of property), and stories may fall into that to some extent, so it's extra important to make sure you're not unintentionally crossing those lines.

OK, that is an interesting twist I didn't know about. Thank you.

[Melange_Thief]

On the topic of academic works, there's a slim but non-zero chance you might be able to find something in the International Conference on Salishan and Neighboring Languages archives (link here: https://lingpapers.sites.olt.ubc.ca/icsnl-volumes/). Once in a while you'll get papers that are primarily just recorded narratives in there for corpus linguistics purposes. As an aside, anyone with a linguistics background should also love this link, as Salishan languages have a lot of interesting stuff going on with them!

I have to say, though, the best approach would probably be to approach the tribe directly to find resources. For one, the tribe naturally will know better than anyone else, and on top of that the peoples here in the Northwest have ancient and strong traditions of systems of familial ownership over cultural heritage (for example, names and specific dances can be inherited within families as a form of property), and stories may fall into that to some extent, so it's extra important to make sure you're not unintentionally crossing those lines.

[omenseer]

Do you have access to an academic library? It's possible that there are scholarly articles that don't come up on normal web searches.

Not tat I know of, but that is an interesting approach.

[LaughingGull]

Do you have access to an academic library? It's possible that there are scholarly articles that don't come up on normal web searches.

[omenseer]

So I did a google search and there's a couple of stories I found on the Nisqually nation's web site.

Here ya go. It's only a couple stories, but the stories are knowingly shared by the tribe itself.

I came across this. Unfortunately it is not as substantial as I would have hoped. The only other thing I was able to find was a flood story.

Thank you though.

[Kyman201]

So I did a google search and there's a couple of stories I found on the Nisqually nation's web site.

Here ya go. It's only a couple stories, but the stories are knowingly shared by the tribe itself.