The Politics of Power in Indigenous Oral History

Oral history has often been politically styled a “democratic tool” apt in amplifying the voices of the previously silenced. This chapter unpacks these underlying political approaches and definitions in oral history and tradition, and compares and contrasts these with an indigenous perspective on the politics at work within oral history as a field. The chapter explores how the politics of indigenous oral history are always concerned with an assertion of self-determination that is intimately connected to expressions of tribal identity. Examples, such as a tribal indigenous political reading of gender, are used to demonstrate the wider impact of the “Politics of Power” and the ways indigenous oral histories are driven and emboldened by the need to survive, resist, and decolonize our past and present.

Rethinking the Form of Oral History

This chapter examines the form of oral history sources and what scholars argue constitutes an “oral” source. It compares popular definitions drawn from the fields of oral history and tradition, and analyses these from an indigenous perspective using the voices of Ngāti Porou people. This chapter proposes a specific Māori definition of oral history called “kōrero tuku iho,” and explores the many ways in which tribal peoples describe and define the form of oral history. These include broader perceptions of what constitutes an “oral literature,” the concept of ownership and oral history, the living nature of oral sources, the shaping and dissemination of oral history via word of mouth, and the intergenerational construction of oral memory in formal speech making, narrative, performance, songs, carvings, incantations and prayer.

The Displacement of Indigenous Oral History

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.

The Indigenous Truth of Oral History

“Oral History in Indigenous Articulation” is the concluding chapter of the book. In summary, it highlights how existing oral history theory, politics, methods, and ethics may be largely different, but are not without some resonance to indigenous perspectives. It suggests a decolonizing approach to oral history rather than a simplistic democratizing politics. This chapter emphasizes the importance of rethinking oral history and tradition with the inclusion of indigenous knowledges regarding the form of oral sources, culturally relevant and appropriate methods, theories, and ethics. Finally, it challenges oral historians and oral traditionalists to rethink the underlying concepts of oral sources and methods by including indigenous perspectives and definitions of orality, history, and tradition.

Oral History and Indigenous People

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.

Interweaving Oral History Theories with Indigenous Patterns

All historical methods are informed by underlying theoretical presuppositions. Oral historians have adopted, developed, and adapted various theories to enable deeper readings of their interviews, with increasing attention given to memory theories, forgetting, narrative, myth, and trauma. Chapter 7, “Interweaving Oral History Theories with Indigenous Patterns,” surveys and considers popular theoretical frameworks that have been employed by oral historians and oral traditionalists. It discusses the ways in which collective memory, myth, composure, narrative, the oral formulaic theory, and other frameworks resonate and interweave with indigenous Ngāti Porou theories of oral history and oral transmission. This chapter explores various native theoretical ideas relevant to agency, subjectivity, decolonization, transformative praxis, and knowledge construction that are important to Ngāti Porou philosophies about our own identity, history and oral culture.

Indigenous Oral History in Method and Practice

Over the past century, the life history interview has become the preferred methodology used by oral historians. This chapter compares the methods used by oral historians and oral traditionalists, and analyses these from an indigenous perspective. Centered in an indigenous analysis, this chapter examines various methods including one-on-one interviews, group interviews, surveys and questionnaires, and observation approaches popular in the work of anthropologists and ethnographers. It focuses on how these methods resonate, or not, with Ngāti Porou peoples, and considers the extent to which “walk-along” interviews, visual approaches, and other visceral multisensory methods are also part of the oral history methods toolkit. This chapter turns its attention to the importance of field notes, observations, and ethics to suggest a broadening and rethinking of the methodology of the field.

The Dynamics of Indigenous Oral Sources

This chapter continues the examination of the form of oral sources, with a more explicit and detailed focus on how indigenous peoples create and transmit oral accounts. It demonstrates how the form of oral history is shaped within competing community dynamics, highlighting how the form is produced and passed on via community “classrooms,” in books, print and through the voice, by specialists and tribal experts, and through songs, chants, and dance. In addition to the previous chapter, “The Dynamics of Indigenous Oral Sources” examines how oral history sources are living accounts passed on in dynamic forms, with their own attendant cultural frames of reference essential for understanding and unpacking the sources themselves.