Aboriginal Oral Traditions
  • Paperback ISBN: 9781552662670
  • Paperback
  • Paperback Price: $24.95 CAD
  • Publication Date: Apr 2008
  • Rights: World
  • Pages: 176

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Aboriginal Oral Traditions

Theory, Practice, Ethics

Edited by Renate Eigenbrod, Renée Hulan

Oral traditions are a distinct way of knowing and the means by which knowledge is reproduced, preserved and transferred from generation to generation. The conference from which these essays were selected created an opportunity for people to come together and exchange information and experiences over three days. The scholarship may be grouped into three broad areas: oral traditions and knowledge of the environment, economy, education and/or health of communities; oral traditions and continuance of language and culture; and the effects of intellectual property rights, electronic media and public discourse on oral traditions.

Contents

  • Preface: Oral History and Oral Traditions (Stephen J. Augustine)
  • Introduction: A Layering Of Voices: Aboriginal Oral Traditions (Renée Hulan and Renate Eigenbrod)
  • The Assault on Aboriginal Oral Traditions: Past and Present (Andrea Bear Nicholas)
  • Silas T. Rand’s Work Among the Mi’kmaq (Stephen J. Augustine)
  • The Little Boy Who Lived with Muini’skw (Bear Woman) (Catherine Martin)
  • Conflicts, Discourse, Negotiations and Proposed Solutions Regarding Transformations of Traditional Knowledge (Greg Young-Ing)
  • A Bad Connection: First Nations Oral Histories in the Canadian Courts (Drew Mildon)
  • Amplified Voices: Rebecca Belmore’s Reinvention of Recording Technologies in the Transmission of Aboriginal Oral Traditions (Sophie McCall)
  • Fighting with Our Tongues, Fighting for Our Lives: Talk, Text and Amodernity in Warlpiri Women’s Voices: Our Lives, Our History (Michèle Grossman)
  • Voices Heard in the Silence
  • History Held in the Memory: Ways of Knowing Jeannette Armstrong’s ‘Threads of Old Memory’ (Tasha Hubbard)
  • Theatre as Suture: Grassroots Performance Decolonization and Healing (Qwo-Li Driskill)
  • Contributors

About the Authors

Renate Eigenbrod is Associate Professor in the Department of Native
Studies at the University of Manitoba where she teaches Canadian Aboriginal Literatures.
Renate Eigenbrod’s research interests revolve around theories of decolonization in relation to Aboriginal literatures in Canada and Indigenous literatures globally. After investigating the ethics of positionality, she is presently working on the role of Aboriginal literatures within the larger societal discourses of genocide on the one hand and of reconciliation and redress on the other. She is also interested in community-based literary activities like the Aboriginal writers collectives in urban centres.
She is the co-editor of Creating Community: A Roundtable on Canadian Aboriginal Literatures and the author of Travelling Knowledges: Positioning the Im/migrant Reader of Aboriginal Literatures in Canada.

Renée Hulan teaches Canadian literature at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is the author of Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture and the editor of Native North America: Critical and Cultural Perspectives. Before joining the Faculty at Saint Mary’s University in 1998, Renée Hulan received a PhD from McGill University in 1996 and held a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship in Native literature at the University of British Columbia from 1996-1998. While she teaches all periods and genres of Canadian literature, her area of interest is Canadian literary and cultural history. From 2005-2008, she was the co-editor of the Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes.
 

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Reviews

Great Plains Research

 This collection of essays acknowledges and celebrates Aboriginal oral traditions in contemporary Aboriginal communities. Furthermore, many of these articles also tackle issues of appropriation, oral tradition in the courts, the effects of intellectual property rights, and the electronic media while drawing on the experience of Aboriginal community members themselves. In the cases and examples cited, the theory is not separated from practice, which helps ground the articles in current realities and pushes ethical discussions in empowering directions.

These essays are the result of a conference held in 2005 inspired by the archived work of Silas T. Rand, a missionary who listened to and gathered Mi’kmaq stories in the mid-1800’s. Many academics, filmmakers, historians and community members have been involved with researching and discussing the many layers of historical and community interpretation of these stories.

While making for a slim volume, these nine essays (by Andrea Bear Nicholas, Stephen J. Augustine, Catherine martin, Greg Young-Ing, Drew Mildon, Sophie McCall, Michele Grossman, Tasha Hubbard, and Qwo-Li Driskill, with an introduction by Renée Hulan and Renate Eigenbrod) cover an impressive scope of current issues concerning Aboriginal oral traditions. As those working win the area of oral history know, much has been written about the historical evolution of Euro-western culture that privileged the western written mode of communication over Aboriginal oral traditions. This collection represents a post-Delgamuukw v. British Columbia look at the theory, practice, and ethics involved when conducting Aboriginal oral history research.

All the authors are trying in their own ways to decolonize ingrained practices and approaches and stress the importance of oral narratives in their communal contexts. They provide us with many examples and options for changing practices and attitudes. There are several areas of focus for these essays that, when woven together, form an imaginative, and challenging read. The topics of ethics, authority, and community validation are often the main themes interlacing the essays. Whatever the topic or practice, many of the authors advocate going back to the community for validation and interpretation. This is one of the collections strengths. There is a need for oral history practitioners who are working with Aboriginal communities to reflect on and  learn from examples of how projects can become part of the community and how this process is often part of the community healing.

My only criticism is that the collection is a bit uneven in terms of the length and depth of the articles. Articles are as brief as 6 pages or as comprehensive as 26 pages, which interrupts the flow of the large discussion. Qwo-Li Driskill ends the collection by saying that “we can continue oral traditions and imagine new stories for a decolonized future.” As historians, oral history practitioners, or academics we need to be continually looking at decolonizing approaches and processes, and this book provides many examples and poses may important questions.  – Maureen Simpkins, University of the North, Thompson Manitoba for Great Plains Research, Vol. 19 No. 2, 2009

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