Napi: The Trickster

The collection of Napi stories is very interesting. And the introduction includes some very useful context of how the stories were used and developed. The author gives some insight into the character of the “trickster” in Aboriginal story telling and how the listeners interpreted the lessons. But I feel like the author is overly concerned with including every single variation from every tribe and getting the story as close to the original as possible. The very nature of oral story telling is that stories are fluid and change with each teller. I think the book would have felt more natural had the author explained this in the intro and then let the stories speak for themselves.