Once I heard the story
of the woman who fell from the sky.
I was with the Mohawks of Akwesasne.
The Mohawk culture is sedentary
and they don't have the same stories as ours.
But if you notice, the goal is the same,
that is, to find one's place in the universe.
They talk about this woman, that fell from the sky world,
and she was placed on a turtle's back.
A big giant sea turtle and it was the birds that did that.
She fell through a hole from a place they call sky world.
And sky world was like a wondrous place.
And when she was falling, she was pregnant.
She was going to have a child.
And the birds noticed this beam falling from this place.
This where this light was coming from,
and they got beneath her and held on to this sea turtle
as it was coming out of the water.
They said,"Can we place this beam on your back?"
And he said, "Yes, it's okay."
So that's what the birds did, they placed her on the back.
And then she went on to explain to them
where she came from.
And, why she was there, you know.
She had fallen through this hole,
and she said that this isn't really familiar.
She needed something to make it familiar.
So she asked some of the water animals,
to go underneath the water.
And they did make it. They brought up some soil.
And they put it on top of this turtle.
And she got up and she started to do this dance.
In a motion. And it made that turtle grow bigger
and the soil spread all like that, you know.