Moccasin Tracks

FOR GRADES K - 6
LENGTH: 40 - 50 minutes plus 10-minute question period

SPECIAL CURRICULUM APPLICATIONS: Native People’s heritage and culture, story-telling, movement, role-playing, social studies, mythology

MOCCASIN TRACKS: There is an old Indian saying, “Never criticize a man until you have walked a thousand miles in his moccasins.” In these stories we traces the steps of Coyote and Eagle, of Jumping Mouse on his vision quest, of Coyote, Iktome the Spider and even Iya the Rock and finally, the Creator Himself -- each has a journey, sometimes inside and sometimes outside of himself to find new meanings, new beauty, or sometimes just to get into trouble -- as Coyote so often does. But it is with Jumping Mouse that we travel through adversities and discover that the gift of giving helps us to transcend all obstacles and soar into the sky, seeing the World through the eyes of another. MOCCASIN TRACKS leads us from one idea to another, one vision to another with charm and grace and abundant wit.

“Children squealed with laughter as the actors turned them into mice or water reflections…Adults understood the underlying human foibles within the animal characters…Watching two men become mice, wolves, buffalo and eagles stirs the imagination. A Crumpled heap under a buffalo head-dress becomes a lyrical, majestic buffalo. Two [coup sticks] transform a mouse-man into a soaring spirit.”
THE WESTERN WHEEL, Okotoks, Alberta