Whistling at Night, Homegrown Storytelling, and Respect

Last night, we were lucky enough to be streamed and interviewed by MisterShins on twitchtv. It was a wonderful, very gratifying experience. At one point I was asked about how one would go about being respectful when using Turtle Island (North American) lore and inspiration in storytelling. I'm not satisfied with what I said in the interview and wanted to expand on that idea here.

When developing Whistling at Night, we knew we wanted to tell a story native to the places we grew up and live. We wanted our game to be a love letter to the rich storytelling history of Turtle Island. And it was important that we honor the conventions of our native stories. Those conventions being:

1. There had to be a lesson.

Turtle Island stories nearly always have a message - something to learn and think about. Granted, there are over 500 nations, and I couldn't possibly learn every story in a single lifetime, but all of my sources, from both written and spoken word storytellers, hold true to this idea. Sometimes the stories tell us about the natural world and how we can learn about ourselves by studying our plant and animal relatives, as in the story "The Water Nymph and the Dragonfly." Sometimes they teach us the importance of living in a good way as in any story involving the ideas behind the 7 Grandfather Teachings. Many are trickster stories in which a mischievous or negative role model like Rabbit from Cherokee stories or Iktomi from Sioux traditions get themselves in and out of trouble.

2. Morality is never black and white.

The idea that some things are inherently bad and some are inherently good and that it is the duty of "good" things to destroy "bad" things is very much a colonial import. A great example of this is shown in the disparity between the Two Wolves story that settlers tell and its original Cherokee version. The settler version is very short and goes something like this:

A man says to his son, "Inside me (and every person) there are two wolves. A good wolf and a bad wolf. They are always fighting."

The son asks, "Which one will win?"

The father answers, "The one I feed the most."

The original Cherokee story goes like this:

There was once a young man who was doing good things for the people of his village and would soon take a leadership role. His grandfather saw this happening and wanted to give his grandson some wisdom to help him be a good leader. So he says to his grandson, "There is a war going on inside me and every person. Inside each of us is a battle between two wolves. A light wolf and a shadow wolf. The light wolf is made of joy, kindness, generosity, peace, gratitude, and the like. The shadow wolf is made of things like fear, shame, greed, superiority, and anger. Both want to be heard, and I struggle with them every time I must make a decision."

The grandson asks, "Why don't you simply take care of the light wolf since it is helpful?"

His grandfather answers, "No, I must - we must feed them both. Because if we ignore the shadow wolf and let it go unheard and hungry, it will be waiting for us around every corner. We will feel shame for being ashamed, we will be angry at ourselves for feeling anger, and our fear and loneliness will multiply everytime we stumble or are stressed or weakened. You must feed them both. Because if they are both well fed, there will be no reason to fight. With no reason to fight, there will be no war within you. And if there is no war inside you, you will not make war outside of you.

3. Be respectful of Taboos.

There are some things that aren't meant for outsiders. They belong to their cultures and it is important to respect those boundaries. Many settler and non-native creators like to tell stories about forbidden legends presumably because the taboo aspect makes them seem more valuable and worth exploiting. As a result, these stories that hold an important almost sacred place in their cultures get distorted, sensationalized, and disrespected by outside forces.

Even Rowan was not aware of this, and the original draft of the script had a reference to these creatures. So, for the sake of spreading awareness, I will refer to them tangentially: one rhymes with "tin talker" and the other sounds a bit like "Winnebago." These legends come from the Diné (Navajo) and Anishinabeg people. Many times people from these respective cultures have asked the rest of the world not to tell or make up stories about these creatures. We think it's important to be respectful and honor these wishes.

So how do these concepts manifest in Whistling at Night?

Well, number 3 was up to research. When developing our monster, I made sure to draw inspiration from stories that were publicly available and were shared by actual First Nations storytellers. The book When the Chenoo Howls: Native American Tales of Terror by Joseph and James Bruchac as well as the website native-languages.org were my main sources. I wanted the story to be a post-colonial retelling, so I looked for similarities across many Turtle Island cultures and cobbled together a being that embodied an amalgam of those horror conventions. I wanted a monster that was clearly of Native Turtle Island origin but didn't strongly point to any one culture. I believed that this choice would underline a post-colonial reality while also giving the audience a stronger sense of "this could happen to me." Similarly, warnings against whistling at night can actually be found globally. It's prohibited across Turtle Island, in Islamic nations, by native Australians, and in some Asian countries like Vietnam and Japan.

Numbers 1 and 2 go hand in hand were more Rowan's responsibility. For 2, he made sure our characters were likable but flawed. Bad things didn't happen because they were "bad people who deserved it" but because they were careless and broke the rules. In fact, I feel that the impact of the ending hits harder because we know that Stokes is a fun guy who helps others and was deeply loved and important to people like his grandmother.

In regards to the ever important lesson 1, we thought about why scary stories exist in the first place. They were told to children to keep them safe. Give them a little fear today to keep them alive through tomorrow. So we told Whistling at Night like death was on the line for the listener. We tried to tell it like we had only one shot to scare the audience straight and if we failed, that was it. And the lesson was about listening to indigenous voices. In a world threatened by corporate greed and climate chaos, listening to the original stewards of the land is of the utmost importance. And if we don't listen today, we might not see tomorrow.