The Choctaw Nation has stories about animals that’re told both for entertainment and to teach kids important social lessons. These are called Shukha Anumpa, or “pig talk,” or, more anciently, “possum talk.”
“One of the main characters in those stories is the possum, and that’s why they’re called that,” Thompson explains. “Originally, it meant ‘possum tales,’ but with the linguistic shift I was telling you about, it now means ‘hog tales’ or ‘pig talk,’ even though a pig’s not a character in it. That’s what those stories are interpreted as, which is kind of interesting, how dominant the hogs have become linguistically. I guess that reflects what it’s become in terms of culinary aspects too.”
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