"In oral cultures – cultures where literary values do not yet dominate basic habits of thought – words are events, not records" (Smith, World as Event 71). – reference to Ong. "Such people tend to experience themselves as participants in a meaningful, eventing, actuality. For the Dene one’s life is a story, a drama with purpose and meaning (Cruickshank). Nothing happens fortuitously. One may have good luck or bad luck, but luck is never ‘luck’ in our sense something being fortuitous. It is frequently impossible to say why one is luck or unlucky, but there is always a reason – and always purpose and meaning to one’s existence" … "The world as event is a living presence, which one comes to understand only to the degree one participates in nature. Meditations upon environing nature are not enough; deliberate interaction is essential" (Smith, World as Event 72).