Nomenclature
The username I wanted in the first place came up in the purge. This one is easy to learn about online, if you're curious.
The old one is the name of a character in one of the short stories found in Daughters of Copper Woman by Anne Cameron. Ms Cameron is Nootka; I think their real name, meaning not the one the Russians tossed at them, is spelled something like Nuu-Chah-Nul'th. The Nootka are the Indians -- that's First Nations people in Canada, bub -- of Vancouver Island. (Despite the fact that we actually have an Indians-from-India community now, I personally don't use the term "Native American" because all the American Indians I have met, fullblooded and otherwise, have called themselves Indian. I figure that since I live in the most-Indian-per-capita city in the US, this sample is acceptable.)
Daughters of Copper Woman includes oral history and myth that Cameron learned from her grandmother. She has filled in some of the gaps with novelization, but the gist of the stories is the same as it ever was (insert giant grey suit here). In the story called "Qolus the Changeable," Qolus is Thunderbird's wife. She is depressed by being trapped, and wants to live with people, rather than alone with him in the sky. Thunderbird says he can enable her to do this, but he can only do it by altering her, and she will be completely transformed. She agrees to this. Her human form is male. He lives a full and very happy life on the earth. He becomes a great warrior, falls in love with a woman and has a family with her, and then comes to be an important leader, and finally a revered elder. After he dies, Qolus returns to Thunderbird as Thunderbird's wife (alive and everything), and she is content. It's a bit "there's no place like home" at the end but it resonated with me a lot for a very long time.
The old one is the name of a character in one of the short stories found in Daughters of Copper Woman by Anne Cameron. Ms Cameron is Nootka; I think their real name, meaning not the one the Russians tossed at them, is spelled something like Nuu-Chah-Nul'th. The Nootka are the Indians -- that's First Nations people in Canada, bub -- of Vancouver Island. (Despite the fact that we actually have an Indians-from-India community now, I personally don't use the term "Native American" because all the American Indians I have met, fullblooded and otherwise, have called themselves Indian. I figure that since I live in the most-Indian-per-capita city in the US, this sample is acceptable.)
Daughters of Copper Woman includes oral history and myth that Cameron learned from her grandmother. She has filled in some of the gaps with novelization, but the gist of the stories is the same as it ever was (insert giant grey suit here). In the story called "Qolus the Changeable," Qolus is Thunderbird's wife. She is depressed by being trapped, and wants to live with people, rather than alone with him in the sky. Thunderbird says he can enable her to do this, but he can only do it by altering her, and she will be completely transformed. She agrees to this. Her human form is male. He lives a full and very happy life on the earth. He becomes a great warrior, falls in love with a woman and has a family with her, and then comes to be an important leader, and finally a revered elder. After he dies, Qolus returns to Thunderbird as Thunderbird's wife (alive and everything), and she is content. It's a bit "there's no place like home" at the end but it resonated with me a lot for a very long time.