How the Rainbow was made

Made by: Sabrina, Kayona, Jesse, and Kaysharyce

The Native American Culture

• Indigenous North American belief systems consist of many sacred narratives.
• Native American spiritual stories are deeply based in Nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons, weather, plants, animals, earth, water, sky and fire.
• The principle of an all embracing, universal and omniscient Great Spirit is a connection to the Earth, and diverse creation narratives and collective memories of ancient ancestors are common.

This is a statue that they have in festivals for celebrations.

The Native American Culture (cont.)

• Universal principles are held to be more important than a single individual’s traits even among Native Americans today.
• Whereas Greek myths were shaped and ordered by classical authors, few Native American myths were written down before the late 19th century.
• Thus the apparent inconsistencies of the right-brain oral tradition are still very much present.

This bird with feathers of multiple colors flies with it’s wings spread wide open letting the colors from it’s feathers seem like a rainbow across the sky.

The Native American Myth: How the rainbow was made

In this myth there is a man named Nanabozho. He was looking out his window one day and saw a meadow of white flowers. He thought they looked so boring because they were all the same color. He decided that he wanted to change that and make it have more exciting colors that stand out.

This is Nanabozho

The Native American Myth: How the rainbow was made (cont.)

He brought out his paint to give the flowers those bright exciting colors. While he was painting the flowers, there were two birds that flew around the waterfall. As they were flying around the birds flew into the pots of paint and got the color on their bodies.

The two birds flying through the waterfall.

The Native American Myth: How the Rainbow was made (cont.)

They flew into each color. Then they flew through the waterfall. When they came out of the waterfall, there were different streaks of color. Each color was there in the order of a rainbow. That’s how the rainbow was made.

Rainbow Myth

This myth explains how rainbows were made, and the culture it came from was North American. The next slide explains the science behind rainbows.

The Science of Rainbows

Rainbows are made when the raindrops reflect on sunlight and the white sunlight is broken in colors. As light enters a water droplet, the different wavelength colors bend at slightly different angles. Some of this light reflects off the back of the droplet and is bent a second time as the droplet emerges from the light beam. Drops at different angles send distinctively different colors to the eye.