The World According to Is’a, Redux

Interesting convergences exist between Indigenous creation stories in different parts of the world, with regard to the role of wolves.  Among Shoshonean peoples of the western United States, Wolf created a perfect world in which individuals were reincarnated after death and birth was painless. Her younger brother, Coyote, insisted that this would not work and that death must be permanent. Yarralin people of NW Australia have a similar story in which Dingo assumes the role of wolf and Moon assumes the trickster role. There are four possible explanations for the similarity between these stories: 1) Jungian archetypes involving Canids, 2) the stories have a common root, which would make this the oldest story known, 3) extensive cultural diffusion of stories; few places on earth are more distant than Australia and America’s intermountain west, and 4) an extraordinary coincidence, which seems unlikely given similarity of details.