It's not quite as simple as that. Around here, clans have ownership of stories and artifacts. But not all stories are held privately. Some are very public, and are published in books and are regularly rewritten, retold, and reillustrated. But some are quite private. It's up to each clan how closely to hold its stories.
Many of us have this structure in our own families. When I was younger I heard some stories about certain family members that I was free to tell anyone. I can tell you that I was born in Guam because my father was in the Navy and he and my mom were stationed there when I was born. But there are other stories in our family that it would be quite disrespectful for me to share in public.
With Native groups from southeast Alaska, these ownership issues have been much more formalized, over a much longer time period, than what I saw in my family.
