Leslie Marmon Silko describes Pueblo culture as deeply rooted in oral traditions and storytelling, where knowledge, beliefs, and experiences are perpetuated through generations, creating a continuous narrative that embodies the community's identity and history.
When Leslie Marmon Silko speaks about her Pueblo culture, she emphasizes that knowledge, experience, and beliefs are preserved through narratives and oral traditions, tightly interwoven with the identity of the Pueblo people. These narratives span generations, creating an 'ancient continuous story' composed of countless other stories. This non-written form of history and culture keeps it a living, evolving process, where the individuals see themselves as active parts of a grand and ongoing narrative, embodying both the stories of their predecessors and those of their own which will be passed on in turn.
This method of preserving culture highlights an important difference in the transmission of knowledge compared to cultures that rely heavily on written records. The oral tradition within the Pueblo community reflects a broader practice amongst indigenous cultures, where shared stories play a critical role in maintaining a connection with the past. These stories are performed and retold, breathing life into history and making it an intrinsic part of the cultural identity and daily life of the community. Furthermore, this oral history has been capable of accurately maintaining intricate details of events over millennia, as with the oral histories of geological occurrences like the Missoula floods.