When law is examined in this broader cultural context, the specific meanings for a tribe and a community are as important as are the general meanings of the law within a legal tradition. Tribal law, specifically traditional customary law, requires a command of the tribal language for it to be articulated, while the others can be competently explicated in English. In these instances, law is bound within a number of overlapping, integrated and separate histories. To Top Community History History as interpretation of the past consists of the stories a group tells and remembers, or it consists of the stories other people remember and tell about the group. History as a living part of community life is the interpretation of past events, which defines major aspects of the present, and influences the ways in which communities understand their options for the future.
Tradition is that part of history remembered and conveyed across generations.
As such, it determines behavior. A group's understanding of its own histories shapes the ways in which people understand themselves and the ways in which they act. Other people's under-standing of the group's history shape the ways in which those others know the group, as well as how the group reacts to the outsiders. An Indian community's understanding of its own history is a combination of these dynamics, and it determines how they act as change takes place in the basic institutions of their society. Some tribes adopted the new model without question.