ABSTRACT
At San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico, storytelling serves both sacred and secular purposes. Sacred storytelling is usually performed by men in the kivas as part of ceremonial preparation, initiation of the young, and other matters requiring private communication concerning religious matters. None of the kiva stories is ever told in public. Both women and men tell secular stories in various public settings. Public storytelling used to be done only in the wintertime, but by the 1990s traditional storytellers could be found telling many different types of stories throughout the year in schools, at health and other types of conferences, at intertribal gatherings, and at storytelling festivals.
