THREE STORIES

1) Chippewa Story:

The oriole was originally a dull grey.  Then one morning, long ago, a Chippewa heard the oriole crying sadly to the rising sun and bemoaning the fact that it was not clothed in beautiful colours like the sun.  The Chippewa then heard the sun agree to give the oriole colours like its own on condition that the bird sing its lovely song every morning as the sun rises.

2) Yupiaq Story

The older brother is shown by others the direction to go home. He soon joined the other brother. They grew to a ripe old age, and eventually the older brother died followed closely by his younger brother. The latter slipped into another world and immediately saw his brother walking toward him. He could see that his brother had a cut on his lip. He noticed that he too had a similar cut. He told his brother that this was his punishment for killing those birds. They pondered the question of where they should go. The older loved the land, while the younger felt at home in the ocean. They decided that they would separate and go to the place of their liking. The older brother became a rabbit, the younger a seal. To this day they are classified together as they both have cleft lips and are brothers!

Seal   Mouth                                    Rabbit Mouth

3) Genesis, The Hebrew Bible

Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years

Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth....

Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kinds" and it was so.

Then God said, "Let Us make man in in OUR image, according to OUR likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth...