As I was reading these Coyote stories in these hundred-year-old ethnographies—because that truly is the state of this incredible body of oral literature, that is the only place they really exist anymore for my people—I started realizing that the trickster, this incredible creator, destroyer, survivor, deadbeat dad, looked a lot like my own dad, this incredible creator, destroyer, survivor, deadbeat.

Probably the most significant quality of the Coyote is that he dies and resurrects so many times that our people didn’t even bother to keep count—not that it’s a competition with Jesus or anything, but Jesus only did it once.

…

One thing that has always bothered me about the erasure and the invisibility of Native people is that we have some damn good stories. We deal with a lot of loss and death in our communities. Maybe that’s why we’ve gotten so good at telling stories, because we have to remember our loved ones? Otherwise, who else will? Clearly not this colonial society.