The Coyote & The Prairie Dog

The Coyote & The Prairie Dog is a Hopi story performed by a native Hopi speaker and a second English speaker. The video was made by alias Rez02 as a project at the Moenkopi Youth Centre in Tuba City, Arizona in 2002. In this story, Coyote does not act as a trickster, but still displays his curious nature. The Hopis had trickster stories, but this specific story is used to teach a lesson. This video is useful because it serves as a good reference point for how a trickster tale is told in it's natural language and register, and translated into English. There are two performers who speak at relatively the same page, so because the female's version is much longer, it can be deducted that Hopi stories, on average, took longer to tell.

Further Thought

 * See Talk:The Coyote & The Prairie Dog for questions to think about and discuss.