Oral History and Indigenous People

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Nēpia Mahuika
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Perspectives

Indigenous peoples think about oral history differently. This is the key assertion of this opening chapter, which draws on a specific Māori tribal context and community to show how native peoples maintain and employ our own interpretations of oral history. This chapter highlights the tensions and divisions between oral history and oral tradition, revealing how these disciplines have been instrumental in the colonial displacement of indigenous historical knowledge as traditions, myths, and folk songs. Drawing on a personal tribal journey and experience, this chapter reveals how indigenous perspectives remain largely absent in today’s popular oral history definitions, particularly in regard to the form, methods, theories, and politics of the discipline.

Rethinking Oral History and Tradition

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nepia Mahuika
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Politics ◽  
Indigenous Perspectives ◽  
Indigenous Perspective ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
The Way

For many indigenous peoples, oral history is a living intergenerational phenomenon that is crucial to the transmission of our languages, cultural knowledge, politics, and identities. Indigenous oral histories are not merely traditions, myths, chants, or superstitions, but are valid historical accounts passed on vocally in various forms, forums, and practices. Rethinking Oral History and Tradition: An Indigenous Perspective provides a specific native and tribal account of the meaning, form, politics, and practice of oral history. It is a rethinking and critique of the popular and powerful ideas that now populate and define the fields of oral history and tradition, which have in the process displaced indigenous perspectives. This book, drawing on indigenous voices, explores the overlaps and differences between the studies of oral history and of oral tradition, and urges scholars in both disciplines to revisit the way their fields think about orality, oral history methods, transmission, narrative, power, ethics, oral history theories, and politics. Indigenous knowledge and experience hold important contributions that have the potential to expand and develop robust academic thinking in the study of both oral history and tradition.

The Displacement of Indigenous Oral History

2019 ◽  
pp. 16-39
Author(s):  
Nēpia Mahuika
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Fields Of Study

This chapter examines the evolution of oral history and oral tradition as two separate fields of study with their own associations, journals, theories, and definitions. It considers how these fields have been viewed and engaged with by indigenous writers, with a particular emphasis on scholarship out of Aotearoa New Zealand. Oral history and oral tradition have often been considered the same, but over the past century have been presented as two distinctively different fields with their own theories, methods, and emphases. This chapter surveys the seminal writing and definitions popularized in oral history and tradition, which include the idea of oral history as a methodology and interview practice and oral traditions as predominantly the study of ballads and folk songs. It explores some of the arguments about the orality or textuality of oral sources, and the differing focus oral traditionalists and oral historians have proposed in their evolving theories and politics.

scholarly journals Indigenous Reflections on Identity, Trauma, and Healing: Navigating Belonging and Power

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Urrieta
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Healing Process ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Intergenerational Trauma ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Philosophy ◽  
European Colonialism

Indigenous people are survivors of what some scholars have called the nexus of bio–psycho–social–cultural–spiritual intergenerational trauma. The effects of these multi-plex traumas brought on by European colonialism(s) reverberate into the present and affect Indigenous peoples at various scales, from local interpersonal relations to larger macro scales of geo-regional displacement. Indigenous peoples, however, have also survived the traumas of displacement, genocide, racism, surveillance, and incarceration by sustaining systems of ancestral and contemporary healing practices that contribute to individual and collective survivance. In this essay, I explore intergenerational rememberings of Indigenous identity, trauma, and healing based on personal, family, and community memory. Through rememberings, I seek to deconstruct the Western constructs of identity and trauma, arguing that these conceptions create trappings based on the exclusions of membership that support power hierarchies that perpetuate the dehumanization of Native peoples. By exposing these trappings, I will engage in my own decolonizing healing process by reclaiming, reconnecting, rewriting and rerighting histories. Finally, through an I/We Indigenous philosophy of belonging, I will argue that emotion can be an important saber (knowing) to help understand Indigenous identities as connected, collective, and ancestral ways of knowing and being that re/humanize Indigenous collective relational understandings.

Isolasi Sosio-Budaya Masyarakat Orang Asli di Malaysia dan Kesannya Terhadap Pentafsiran Hukum Islam

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Paiz Hassan ◽  
Mohd Anuar Ramli
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Low Literacy ◽  
Orang Asli ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Local Background ◽  
Negative Perceptions ◽  
Closed Door

Majority of the indigenous people who are the original inhabitants in Malaysia inhibit the remote area of tropical forest which is rich in natural resources. Their lives are separated from the outside community due to several factors such as geography, low literacy, negative perceptions of the surrounding community, and the closed-door attitude of the indigenous people. Consistent preaching activities have changed the faith of the indigenous people from animism orientation towards believing in the Oneness of God. The practice of Islam as a way of life in the lives of indigenous peoples is found to be difficult to practice because the fiqh approach presented to them does not celebrate their local condition. In this regard, this study will examine the socio-cultural isolation of indigenous peoples and their impact on the interpretation of Islamic law. To achieve this objective, the researchers have applied the library research method by referring to the literatures related to the discussion of Islamic scholars in various disciplines of fiqh and usūl al-fiqh. The research found that there is rukhsah and taysir approach given to isolated people as well as with local background to facilitate the religious affairs of the indigenous people. Abstrak Majoriti masyarakat Orang Asli yang merupakan penduduk asal di semenanjung Malaysia mendiami kawasan pedalaman di hutan hujan tropika yang kaya dengan khazanah alam. Kehidupan mereka terasing daripada masyarakat luar disebabkan beberapa faktor seperti geografi, kadar literasi yang rendah, pandangan negatif masyarakat sekitar dan sikap tertutup masyarakat Orang Asli. Gerakan dakwah yang dijalankan secara konsisten telah membawa perubahan kepercayaan sebahagian masyarakat Orang Asli daripada berorientasikan animisme kepada mempercayai Tuhan yang Esa. Pengamalan Islam sebagai cara hidup dalam kehidupan masyarakat Orang Asli didapati agak sukar untuk dipraktikkan lantaran pendekatan fiqh yang disampaikan kepada mereka tidak meraikan suasana setempat mereka. Sehubungan itu, kajian ini akan meneliti keadaan isolasi sosio-budaya masyarakat Orang Asli dan kesannya terhadap pentafsiran hukum Islam. Bagi mencapai objektif tersebut, pengkaji menggunakan kajian kepustakaan sepenuhnya dengan menelusuri literatur berkaitan dengan perbincangan sarjana Islam dalam pelbagai disiplin ilmu fiqh dan usul fiqh. Hasil kajian mendapati terdapat rukhsah dan pendekatan taysir diberikan kepada mereka yang hidup terasing serta berlatar belakang budaya setempat bagi memudahkan urusan keagamaan masyarakat Orang Asli.

Peering Beyond the Imperial Gaze: Using Digital Tools to Construct a Spatial History of Conquest

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy M. Mikecz
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Digital Maps ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
Colonial Texts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spatial Narrative

Ethnohistorians and other scholars have long noted how European colonial texts often concealed the presence and participation of indigenous peoples in New World conquests. This scholarship has examined how European sources (both texts and maps) have denied indigenous history, omitted indigenous presence, elided indigenous agency, and ignored indigenous spaces all while exaggerating their own power and importance. These works provide examples of colonial authors performing these erasures, often as a means to dispossess. What they lack, however, is a systematic means of identifying, locating, and measuring these silences in space and time. This article proposes a spatial history methodology which can make visible, as well as measurable and quantifiable the ways in which indigenous people and spaces have been erased by colonial narratives. It presents two methods for doing this. First, narrative analysis and geovisualization are used to deconstruct the imperial histories found in colonial European sources. Second it combines text with maps to tell a new (spatial) narrative of conquest. This new narrative reconstructs indigenous activity through a variety of digital maps, including ‘mood maps’, indigenous activity maps, and maps of indigenous aid. The resulting spatial narrative shows the Spanish conquest of Peru was never inevitable and was dependent on the constant aid of immense numbers of indigenous people.

When Rights Embrace Responsibilities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Sajeva
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Potential Applicability ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Relationship Of

The conservation of environment and the protection of human rights are two of the most compelling needs of our time. Unfortunately, they are not always easy to combine and too often result in mutual harm. This book analyses the idea of biocultural rights as a proposal for harmonizing the needs of environmental and human rights. These rights, considered as a basket of group rights, are those deemed necessary to protect the stewardship role that certain indigenous peoples and local communities have played towards the environment. With a view to understanding the value and merits, as well as the threats that biocultural rights entail, the book critically assesses their foundations, content, and implications, and develops new perspectives and ideas concerning their potential applicability for promoting the socio-economic interests of indigenous people and local communities. It further explores the controversial relationship of interdependence and conflict between conservation of environment and protection of human rights.

Native Approaches to Decolonising Education in Institutions of Higher Learning

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Polly Walke
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Learning ◽  
The World

A growing number of Native scholars are involved in decolonising higher education through a range of processes designed to create space for Indigenous realities and Indigenous ways of managing knowledge. Basing their educational approaches on Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, they are developing Indigenist approaches within higher education. Ward Churchill (1996:509), Cherokee scholar, explains that an Indigenist scholar is one who:Takes the rights of indigenous peoples as the highest priority …who draws on the traditions – the bodies of knowledge and corresponding codes of value – evolved over many thousands of years by native peoples the world over.

scholarly journals Postcolonial theory and Canada’s health care professions: bridging the gap

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wilmot
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Professional Knowledge ◽  
Healthcare Personnel ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Training Context ◽  
Explanatory Framework ◽  
Health Care Professions

AbstractIn recent years there have been several calls in professional and academic journals for healthcare personnel in Canada to raise the profile of postcolonial theory as a theoretical and explanatory framework for their practice with Indigenous people. In this paper I explore some of the challenges that are likely to confront those healthcare personnel in engaging with postcolonial theory in a training context. I consider these challenges in relation to three areas of conflict. First I consider conflicts around paradigms of knowledge, wherein postcolonial theory operates from a different base from most professional knowledge in health care. Second I consider conflicts of ideology, wherein postcolonial theory is largely at odds with Canada’s political and popular cultures. And finally I consider issues around the question of Canada’s legitimacy, which postcolonial theory puts in doubt. I suggest ways in which these conflicts might be addressed and managed in the training context, and also identify potential positive outcomes that would be enabling for healthcare personnel, and might also contribute to an improvement in Canada’s relationship with its indigenous peoples.

Severed Connections

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel K. Richter ◽  
Troy L. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Autonomy ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
North And South ◽  
Independence Movements

Scholars often portray indigenous peoples' interactions with the Atlantic world in linear terms: European expansion engulfed native communities and enslaves them to a global capitalist system. The mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, however, tells a more complicated tale. By the 1750s, many native peoples had learnt from decades of experience how to engage the Atlantic world on their own varied terms, often to their own advantage. Those engagements were disrupted by the British, French, and Spanish imperial crises spawned by the Seven Years War and especially by the creole independence movements born during those crises. The process worked out differently north and south of the Rio Grande, but, throughout the Americas, the collapse of European empires severed connections that had once guaranteed indigenous autonomy. If balance was the principle of ‘modern Indian politics’, trade was its glue. Throughout the Americas, creoles who proclaimed themselves civilised arrogated to themselves the terms on which native peoples could, or could not, engage with the Atlantic world.

scholarly journals Us Mob Online: The Perils of Identifying as Indigenous on Social Media

Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Carlson ◽  
Tristan Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Insight Into

Social media is a highly valuable site for Indigenous people to express their identities and to engage with other Indigenous people, events, conversations, and debates. While the role of social media for Indigenous peoples is highly valued for public articulations of identity, it is not without peril. Drawing on the authors’ recent mixed-methods research in Australian Indigenous communities, this paper presents an insight into Indigenous peoples’ experiences of cultivating individual and collective identities on social media platforms. The findings suggest that Indigenous peoples are well aware of the intricacies of navigating a digital environment that exhibits persistent colonial attempts at the subjugation of Indigenous identities. We conclude that, while social media remains perilous, Indigenous people are harnessing online platforms for their own ends, for the reinforcement of selfhood, for identifying and being identified and, as a vehicle for humour and subversion.

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