Foreword: Sharing the Love Honoring Our World’s Cultures through Stories Margaret Read MacDonald The peoples of our world tell amazing tales. For generation after gen- eration, our values, curiosities, and delights have been passed down through our stories. These tales continue to please listeners because they speak to our human needs. Our students need to hear these tales from our human heritage. Because our tales arrive from many cultures and many pathways, it is sometimes difficult for us to imagine how stories could or should be used with our students. In this collection, several tellers share stories from their own heritage and give us insights into the way these stories have fit into their own families and cultures. These insights help us in our use of the stories they enable us to share the stories with our students with a deeper under- standing than we often have for the stories we discover, uninterpreted, in books. Joseph Bruchac, a member of the Nulhegan Band of the Abenaki Nation, shares the tale of how Gluskonba gentled the wild animals at their creation and gave us dog for a companion. Joseph’s notes tell us about Gluskonba and suggest discussion questions for this story. Gayle Ross, a member of the Cherokee Nation, brings us a remarkable magical story of two boys who befriend a snake, only to discover they have been nurturing a monster. Now they must choose between the frightening Thunder and the demon snake they had considered their friend. In her fol- low-up questions, Ross examines the moral dilemma the boys face. Rebecca Chamberlain shares a transcription of Upper Skagit elder Vi (taqʷšəblu) Hilbert’s story “Lifting the Sky,” and helpfully shows us an earlier print version of the story. This gives us a chance to observe how a con temporary tribal elder adapts story for performance. Rebecca’s commentary impresses on us the importance of treating the stories we share with respect for their origins. The final story in the first chapter is reprinted from the works of Yank- ton Sioux writer Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), who worked to