So, What Is a Myth?
In Chapter 6, "Approaches to Interpreting Folklore", of our text, Living Folklore, Martha Sims and Martine Stephens explain that myths, “are usually presented as existing outside time or before our own history” and are “usually believed to be true within the group they belong to (Sims an Stephens 2011, 187)." Further, in Chapter 3, "Groups", Sims and Stephens that state that, taken to their farthest extent, myths represent beliefs of “fundamental concepts, perhaps religious or supernatural” through “verbal narratives.” Interestingly, their example is of an Earth Diver myth with the Earth being supported on the back of a giant turtle (Sims and Stephens 2011, 62).
In Chapter 2, "Stalking With Stories," of Keith H. Basso's Wisdom Sits In Places, he states that Western Apaches distinguish between four narrative genres (or stories): myth, historical tale, saga, and gossip. Similarly to Sims and Stephens, he notes that myths "deal with events that occurred in the beginning, a time when the universe and all things within it were achieving their present form and location." Supplementing Sims and Stephens, Basso points out that myths were "performed only by medicine men and women" to enlighten and instruct by explaining and reaffirming the "complex process by which the known world came into existence (Basso 1996, 49-50)."
Of myths, anthropologist Dave Aftandilian, emphasizes that myths are regarded by their tellers as true stories, not fictitious ‘myths’. Additionally, these stories are viewed as sacred. Says Aftandilian, “Native American people regard their stories of the sacred time before time as true, rather than fictional as is implied by the term “myth,” I prefer to refer to them as “sacred stories.” In clarification to Sims and Stephens, however, Aftandilian emphasizes the specifically oral, rather than more generally verbal, nature of these sacred stories. Further, Aftandilian emphasizes that these Native American myths are part of ongoing cultural beliefs, not just some relic of the past and are told in "cultures ... alive and well today,” (Aftandilian 2011, 192).”