The Bungling Host story, widespread throughout Native America, humorously illustrates the perils of overreaching the limits of one's identity while trying to ingratiate one's self. Perhaps the most important thing that needs to be done is to challenge students' notions of myth. Such a definition highlights the fact that myths represent or dramatize shared visions of the world for the people who hold them. Myths articulate the fundamental truths about the shape of the universe and the nature of humanity. It is also important to look at important issues of form such as repetition.
Repetition strikes many students as boring.
Repetition, however, is an aesthetic device that can be used to create expectation. These are all commonplace examples, so commonplace, in fact, that initially most students don't think much of them. But there is no reason why we should begin things by counting to three. We could count to four or five or seven, as respectively the Zunis, the Chinooks, and the Hebrews did. The question of audience is crucial for Native American literature, in that the original audience for the literature understands the world through its own experience much differently than most of our students do.