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HISTORY & MEANING Week 3 ORAL and WRITTEN SOURCES of EVIDENCE Dr. Ryota Nishino and Lalita Sharma. Edited by Dr. Sakul Kundra FLASHBACK • To this day, Pacific history has been taught in the primary and secondary schools of Fiji in the oldfashioned nineteenth-century tradition of “great man” history and distinct from imperial history. • “Great man” history – interest in powerful men and women in their actions and ideas. • Usually European men from political and military background. • Historians tended to write histories based on these written sources, and teachers taught those histories to children. INTRODUCTION • To gain independence from European imperial nations (usually after World War Two), many colonial peoples utilised revolution or armed conflict. The struggle against European colonial power was often brutal in Asia and Africa. • However, transitions to independence in the Pacific Islands were comparatively peaceful. • Oral historical traditions governed lives of Pacific Islanders for thousands of years. They preserved cultural, familial, societal and other important information through the teaching and learning of this history. These histories strengthened Islanders individually and collectively and gave them a framework or orientation to understand their independence from Europe as a normal status. OBJECTIVES YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND AND DISCUSS: • What the term ORAL TRADITIONS means and how oral traditions differ from oral literature and oral history. • the special importance of oral traditions to Pacific history; and • The uses and limitations of oral traditions as sources of historical information. ORAL TRADITIONS & RELATED TERMS 1. Oral traditions 2. Oral literature 3. Oral history WHAT ARE ORAL TRADITIONS? ORAL means spoken, verbal or by word of mouth Other terms: native or traditional ‘TRADITION’ commonly used with custom – phrase: “CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS” Traditional indigenous knowledge (TIK) must be guarded and shared with great caution Custom strongly implies knowledge or practice handed down orally or by word of mouth Oral tradition • Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and tradition transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledges across generations without a writing system. Oral Tradition • Sociologists might also emphasize a requirement that the material is held in common by a group of people, over several generations, and might distinguish oral tradition from testimony or oral history. In a general sense, "oral tradition" refers to the transmissison of cultural material through vocal utterance, and was long held to be a key descriptor of folklore (a criterion no longer rigidly held by all folklorists). • As an academic discipline, it refers both to a set of objects of study and a method by which they are studied—the method may be called variously "oral traditional theory", "the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition" and the "Parry-Lord theory" (after two of its founders; see below) The study of oral tradition is distinct from the academic discipline of oral history, which is the recording of personal memories and histories of those who experienced historical eras or events. • It is also distinct from the study of orality, which can be defined as thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population. MEANING OF TRADITION • “an opinion, belief or custom handed down …from ancestors to posterity (i.e., future generations) especially orally or by practice” (ACOD 1987:1205) e.g., the ‘kava ceremony’. • These ceremonies have a common structure. • There is “traditional” protocol, i.e. a special predetermined procedure for carrying out the ceremony which includes the particular form of serving the yaqona to people according to rank. This presentation is accompanied by symbols and gestures, and special words of address in reference to the office and rank of the participants. • ORAL TRADITION means customs, attitudes, beliefs and practices that have been passed down orally. It refers to the transmission of knowledge, skills and useful information by verbal or oral means. WHAT IS ORAL LITERATURE? • LITERATURE – the use of language in a creative and artistic way; i.e., oral literature is the creative and artistic use of language in oral forms, especially by people who do not have a written language. • It is passed down through the centuries as heroic epic, saga and folk-tale. Songs, riddles, chants and rhymes belong to this literature. ISLAND EQUIVALENTS TO ORAL LITERATURE • HEROIC EPIC – Maui and Tangaroa (Polynesia) • Oral literature or folk literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken (oral) word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do. Oral Literature • • • • The Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu introduced the term orature in an attempt to avoid an oxymoron, but oral literature remains more common both in academic and popular writing Orature means something passed on through the spoken word, and because it is based on the spoken language it comes to life only in a living community. Where community life fades away, orality loses its function and dies. It needs people in a living social setting Pre-literate societies, by definition, have no written literature, but may possess rich and varied oral traditions—such as folk epics, folklore, proverbs and folksong—that effectively constitute an oral literature. Even when these are collected and published by scholars such as folklorists and paremiographers, the result is still often referred to as "oral literature". Literate societies may continue an oral tradition - particularly within the family (for example bedtime stories) or informal social structures. The telling of urban legends may be considered an example of oral literature, as can jokes and also oral poetry including slam poetry which has been a televised feature on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry; performance poetry is a genre of poetry that consciously shuns the written form WHAT IS ORAL HISTORY? • Information which comes from interviews by historians with people who have taken part in historical events. • Oral history is becoming a popular means of obtaining information about the lives of ordinary people. • In Africa, Asia and the Pacific, people of a generation born during pre-literate times are interviewed and their memories become the basis of history. Oral History • Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. • These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. • Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to a written work (published or unpublished) based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries Oral History • The term is sometimes used in a more general sense to refer to any information about past events that people who experienced them tell anybody else, but professional historians usually consider this to be oral tradition. PACIFIC EXAMPLES ORAL TRADITIONS • ORAL TRADITIONS INCLUDE BOTH ORAL LITERATURE AND ORAL HISTORY. This includes: - stories - legends - myths - songs - poems - dances ORATORY (PUBLIC SPEAKING) • This is a prized tradition • In Samoa, Fiji, Tonga and Cook Islands, no formal ceremony could take place without the orators, e.g., tulafale (Samoa), matanivanua (Fiji), matapule (Tonga) rangatira (Cook Islands and New Zealand). • In the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, a gifted orator is recognised as a man of renown or a big-man. • Modern times: these people are negotiators between insiders and foreigners, i.e., mediators between the hosts and the visitors. THE IMPORTANCE OF ORAL TRADITION AS AN INSTRUMENT OF HISTORY • Absence of a written language makes oral tradition the most important form of transmission of knowledge, skills and information. • A good memory is a very valuable asset and society gives respect and prestige to people who have the role of memorising huge chunks of information, e.g., priests. DISADVANTAGES OF ORAL TRADITIONS • They can be stolen and abused by outsiders without benefit to those who own the histories. • Lack of linear chronology – no dates or western historical time-frame. • The stories may possibly change over time. • Bias: information that threatens people in power may be suppressed and forgotten, i.e., oral traditions may exclude the views of people who are opposed to those in power or the views of the poor and powerless. • Oral traditions may die with their possessors when younger people refuse to learn the knowledge. ADVANTAGES OF ORAL TRADITIONS • Oral traditions are sources of information that Pacific islanders possess and control in their reconstruction of the past and the present. • In this reconstruction, they provide another side of history which imperial histories of the islands often ignored. • Visitors gain the opportunity to learn more about ‘local’ perceptions. • Visitors gain a sense of reassessing values or prejudices. • Pacific Islanders have the opportunity to take advantage of the lessons of their past in order to control their present and future. • Pacific Islanders gain power and unity from the histories.