Totem Trouble
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0Members of the noble bunny clan are known throughout the land for being adorable and cuddly. Unfortunately, when war reared its ugly head, bunny clan could not be found. They had somehow managed to fit their entire clan into a single rabbit warren.
They went into the warren with a few hundred clan members and came out with fifty thousand.
People often send me emails asking me to cover certain topics or wondering why I don’t do more comics of X culture’s mythology. Part of the problem with doing comics and blog posts is that I like to be fairly confident in my knowledge on a given subject so that when I write a post, I don’t end up getting fifty comments about how I’m an idiot and messed something up. Creating content for this site is no easy feat, my friends. Given the massive amount of mythology and folklore out there, it is very easy to be wrong about something when you’re trying to study as much of it as you can.
One of the subjects I’m terribly interested in but haven’t found many good books for is Native American mythology and folklore. The major issue being that “Native American” isn’t really a thing. The Americas were and are the home of a great many distinct language and cultural groups with many unique mythological and folkloric traits. While they do share some things in common, they have just as many differences. What I’m getting at is that it’s pretty difficult for me to come up with comics and posts about the people native to the Americas and feel confident.
That said, I’ve been reading a bit about the Ojibwe people of North America and about animist traditions in shamanic cultures across the globe. One of the common practices in animist and shamanistic cultures is the identification of clans and clan totems. Clans (family groups with a perceived common ancestor) each have their own totem, an animal that symbolizes the purpose and represented the mythic past of that group of people. While some people in a clan may actually be blood-related, many are not though members of the same clan are typically reated as family. The clan system was, and still is in some areas, a vital part of interpersonal relationships and a way of understanding social interactions between different regional groups.
The totem animal is a very important part of this kind of social structure not related to the way the “New Age” movement views it. Rather than being a kind of personal spiritual guide that an individual chooses of his or her own accord, the totem is a symbol of the family group and applied to members of a family as they are born. This animal (sometimes a plant, in certain cultures) is usually seen as contributing to the success of a clan in the mythical past and there are many stories about the interactions between clans and their totem animals in the folklore of these cultures. Due to this relationship, a clan’s totem animal is considered as much a brother or sister as any human and, in the case of many cultures sharing this tradition, harming or killing a clan animal is as bad as harming or killing a human member of your clan.
It’s interesting to note how widespread this tradition has been. While I’ve mostly been reading about the Ojibwe version of this concept, it has also been noted in every continent in the world at some point in history.
Despite its wide-spread nature, I’m pretty sure there haven’t been many bunny clans. Hares? Probably. Bunnies? Having your clan represented by a fat rabbit may be funny, but I don’t imagine it’d be very impressive to other clans!
I guess you don’t need to be impressive when you can stupefy your enemies with cuteness, though…
Bunny clan forever!
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It’s best to start with your local nation, and work out. Perk! Unlike a lot of our mythologies, the cultures involved are still, mostly, kinda, alive! So you can ask people questions, and get them to tell you stories. Most Native centres are very kind, if you’re respectful, and if there’s one thing I’m sure of it’s your respectfulness.
I know, I know, socializing in all your spare time. I know that feel, bro.
haha That’s actually a very good point!
Brother bear man, brother bear. THat is all you need to know.
So the Bunny Clan’s Totem isn’t the Rabbit of Caerbannog? If it was, I think I’d rather stay with the Bear Clan…
[I goofed up my html the first time]
haha I’d hate to be those folks in the last panel if it were…
You just like to draw people of varying cultures surrounded by fuzzy animals, don’t you?
Have you tried Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World? It’s a good overview of Tricksters that delves into Native American lore for a lot of its material.
Oooh, that sounds like a good book rec — I’ll add it to *my* list!
My good friend is a Wampanoag “Turtle” of Mashpee. It gets deep when you can sit and listen to the elders speak stories that sadly will never see print.
I guess not too many totem animals are of creatures hunted for food then?
Ahaha…*coughs*
err…sorry… just I was stuck as a “spirit guide” for a bit…
My memory of it though is blocked/sealed so I have no idea how well I did…
…
hmm…perhaps since it’s sealed I did horribly and prevented myself from remembering it later…
That being said I have a profound respect for all the Old “religions” be they
from the Americas, Europe or even Asia… one of the common themes though quite a few is the reverence for nature and the other animals on this Earth.
*sighs*
Often I wish humanity as a whole would go back to that…
living in harmony with the Earth…. for all humanity’s progress…
*sighs*
I’m too tired to rant really…
I don’t know…
Rabbits can be quite nasty at times.
Just ask Elmer Fudd!
New life goal: sleep together with a pile of bunnies.
Anyone who has owned house rabbits will tell you there is a LOT more to them than meets the eye.
Sure, they’re timid and common food for many predators. But they’re also very hardy, and can be extremely friendly, inquisitive (forget cat curiosity!) and social- or extremely savage!- whilst in their “comfort zone”.
Seriously. When my little boy started being flooded with testosterone, he was really nasty- he’d bite me and latch onto my ankle. I once lifted him up attached by his teeth. FROM MY ANKLE. Immediately afterwards he’d sort of go “oh shit that wasn’t the best idea” and skitter away. xD They’re not dumb either! (Well. Some of them are. Some of them are REALLY dumb. Oh the stories I could tell…)
I’d like to live in a bunny clan if they were willing to accept me in a more… alpha position. (They have a more complex hierarchy than you might think!) Anywhere else… Well, I have enough scars.
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Those bunnies have some freaky ass faces
You were right for the most part, but what you don’t realize is that bunnies were very different back then. They were ferocious frothing monsters. The bunny clan lived in fear of these beasts.