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Oral Tradition as the Method to Preserve Cultural Tradition and Values
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One day, Rabbit was out. It was Spring-time. Looking for something to do, and something to eat, as rabbits are always looking for something to eat, he came upon a willow tree that had fresh little shoots in it. It made him so hungry.
He wanted to go and taste some of those shoots but it was high up in the willow tree and you know yourselves that rabbits are not good tree climbers!
This story carries the messages that getting what we wish for always requires a long and untrodden way which needs endurance and effort to achieve as it is represented by the rabbit. Related to the explication of message embedded in the story, Stuart Hall vividly explores that The concept of representation has come to occupy a new and important place in the study of culture. Representation etmnects meaning and language to culture. One common-sense usage of the term is as follows: 'Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.' Representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of signs and images which stand for or represent things (Hall, 2003, p.15). In other words, discerning the conveyed message can be conducted by putting more attention on the use of language. Following quotation gives an example of how use of language plays an important role to bring about the message.
And when Rabbit, when he fell out of that willow tree, he hit that ground so hard, he hit that ground so hard, his long straight arms shot into his body and became little short arms just like they are today!
And when that Rabbit fell out of that tree, and he hit that ground so hard, his long straight legs, they broke and bent just like they are today. And now you know what I’m telling you is true.
Rabbit’s Wish for Snow instills the teaching of Narragansett’s tribe for the effort that human being should ceaselessly conduct to make their wish come true for God has bestowed mind to think and ability to achieve for wish. Moreover, the story explicitly reveals the belief of Indians that sacrifice is inevitably needed in the search of achieving particular dream that human being desire.
The Narragansett have always believed strongly in living in balance with the Earth, respecting all living things, including plants, stones, and all the Earth’s creatures. The Creator gave the people everything they needed, and with their resources and skills. Narragansett culture and life ways were similar to those of other tribes in the region. They were adept at agriculture, regularly planting corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers (Rasmussen, 2000, p 361).
In oral cultures, storytelling maintains and preserves traditions. It takes listeners on a journey toward a renewal of life, a common survival theme in Native rituals and ceremonies (Leen, 2008, p 1). Joy Harjo, a Muscogee poet, exquisitely exposes the Indians tradition in her poem in which the readers are able to fully realize how the Indians try to communicate their cultural traditions.
Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the hardcore. It was the coldest night of the year, every place shut down, but not us. Of course we noticed when she came in. We were Indian ruins. She was the end of beauty.
In "Deer Dancer," a prose poem of significant length, Harjo tells the story of a magical woman who enters a bar, charms the patrons with her beauty, seems to become a sacred deer, and eventually strips naked as she dances for the silent crowd. The use of a deer as the visual imagery to represent certain ideas strengthens the notion that Representation is the production of the meaning of the concepts in our minds through language. It is the link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the 'real' world of objects, people or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and events (Hall, 2004, p. 17).
Harjo performs stories to sustain the lives of real, physical, earthly people, giving them the supernatural, spiritual power of immortality. The supernatural permeates all of Native Americans life. The sacred in turn gives language meaning; it gives words power. The sacred has the quality of balance and harmony when all is well. It celebrates a relationship among all things, a relationship in which harmony and balance are key notions.
The poem brings the listeners to the mythical atmosphere through which they are capable of being closer to the nature as the inseparable part of the Indians life. When the sacred is expressed in story, it links the individual to his community and religion through aesthetic perceptions.
As a storyteller, Harjo promotes survival in the resurrection of memory, myth, and struggles. This act of storytelling is vital and generative. For Native American cultures, storytelling has served as entertainment, as well as to answer questions from curious children about the origins of natural sights and phenomena. In her poem titled "Eagle Poem," Harjo names a site of human origin: We are truly blessed because we/ Were born, and die soon within a/ True circle of motion,/ Like eagle rounding out the morning/ Inside us.
American Indians believe that life is a circular shape that serves as the analogy of the emergence of life and the end of life. Life is believed to be the greatest gift from God that human should preserve and death is an affirmation in human life that they should accept. The analogy of natural elements offers the delicate method of teaching the persistent values existed in American Indians life showing that Native peoples have experienced a relationship of give and take with the natural world. In other words, prayers, songs and dances are all types of stories, which can be offered to honor the earth.
Some stories also provide practical instructions on traditional living, such as Rosella Archdale’s lesson about preparing foods with reverence.
Good morning, this is Sunday morning. And my son and I are preparing a traditional meal to honor our friends. It’s all the food we’ve harvested from all last year, the summer; the spring, summer.
The common theme found in the oral stories is the survival accounts including hunting, gathering, and farming stories talking about how to collect, prepare, and eat foods. In her ‘The Cooking Spirit, Rosella, a Dakota woman, struggles to preserve the custom of American Indians in preparing the foods that they going to eat in which the listeners of the story can grasp the interwoven between human and the nature because the Indians believe that nature has provided them everything they need for living.
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This corn was soaked and you have a little hominy. Washdapi, the Dakota call it. I’m not sure how to say it in any other language. That’s the soup we grew up with, corn soup. Washdapi—corn—and you can see the pieces of meat and white hominy. This has been boiling for 4 hours.
As Indians, we have our values and customs and traditions and one of them is you can’t taste the food. We can’t taste the food because we didn’t offer it to the spirits yet. The spirits eat first, then we eat. We on earth eat last.
The story reveals the daily life of American Indians who depends their entire life from the grandeur of the nature since they cultivate the land and gain the substantial material from it. Rosela clearly teaches the younger generation the Indians way of life through the story as well as to promote the survival of long-rooted tradition.
American Indian society perceive the spirit of the nature as the highest and the most sacred element to which they must actualize the persistent honor by showing the incessant gratitude. Spirituality to American Indians is a way of life.
Spirituality to them carries the idea that every day is a ceremony from the time they get up to the time they go to bed.
Looking at the rising of the sun, American Indians know it is a new day and as they move throughout the day it is always a ceremony.
Both Joy Harjo and Rosela Archdale utilize their stories as the effective device to preserve the cultural tradition of American Indians by instilling the idea of community as the central theme. This community often extends beyond the human to encompass everything in the animate and inanimate realms. The individual is constantly reminded that he is part of the whole, not any more important than any creature around him. This sense of community requires respect and concern for all of creation.
Despite their diversity, there are striking generic similarities among the Native American literatures. Oral literature offers the story about child rearing, friendship and love, hunting routes, bird migrations, family lineage, and prophecies that describe and predict major ecological, celestial and spiritual events.
Native American places love as the important value because love is the most fundamental element in showing the respect to other human being and creatures in the world.
The following poem is an Ojibway courting song. It describes how the young man walked slowly through the camp singing each verse several times so that his girl would have plenty of time to make up her mind to welcome him:
I Will Walk (Ojibway)
I will go into somebody's dwelling Into somebody's dwelling will I walk
To thy dwelling, my dearly beloved Some night will I walk, will I walk
The Ojibway’s love poetry teaches the younger generation of the tribes of the importance of having commitment in the relationship between man and woman as well as the responsibility for the loved one. It can be said that oral literature facilitates the life of the society by recognizing the power of words to instigate action and eventually formulate the world in which the storyteller dwells.
Other traditional themes besides love continue to occupy the generation of American Indian poets. Poems about nature, for example, are common, as indeed they are in almost any body of poetry. The poems usually embody traditional Native American philosophy, viewing the natural world as a vibrantly conscious and spiritually significant whole in which humanity participates.
Rainbow
By Red Unicorn (Barbara Mann) Shimmering color arched against grey sky, Painted by dancing light on air-borne mist.
Wide flung by a sacred hand...
The Hand that formed of dust nothingness The solid Earth below.
This poem eloquently emphasizes the Native American perspective on the nature which gives them the power of life. The natural element such as rainbow is fully regarded as the creation of the invisible and powerful hand which also makes the earth into its existence from the nothingness. This poem also highlights the standpoint of Native American on the sky and earth which become the integrated elements in their daily life. The sky held great significance for American Indians. They studied the stars carefully to determine when their crops should be planted and harvested (Barrett, 2004, p 513).
This poem and others offer the possibility of accepting some of what the Native American offers and using it as a means to help preserve spiritual integrity as well as the possibility of keeping at one’s center native values.
Native American teaches the younger generation of the skill that they must have when they grow to be a mature man.
Young man must have excellent ability in hunting which has been a prestigious activity in life demonstrating the inner strength of Indians in surviving. Survival depended upon the success of the hunt. Through song, the hunter hoped to ensure the assistance of unseen powers to lure game into range and guarantee a successful hunt (Grant, 1985, p 80).
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Song of the Buffalo (Ojibway) The buffalo as they stand in a circle
I join them
This short poem reflects the existence of the hunting as the sacred activity exploring the gratitude of Native American for the richness of the nature. Besides, hunting also provides the opportunity to strengthen the tribal bonds.
Hunting and gathering societies could not amass surplus food supplies, but they generally met their needs adequately and had significant leisure time (Barrett, 2004, p 366).
The explication of the inherited values on the natural objects such as buffalo is inextricably mingled in the story in Indians oral literatures. Song of the Buffalo emphasizes the inseparable relationship between human and animals. Native Americans hunted bison on foot for thousands of years by surrounding a herd until the animals were within range of bows or by setting a fire to stampede a herd over a bluff (Barrett, 2004, p 153). The poem implies the procession of hunting that reveals the closeness of human and the nature. Before hunting, some tribes perform the Buffalo Dance which is meant to ensure an adequate supply of buffalo for the hunt (Barrett, 2004, p 155).
Besides offering the common themes of philosophical perspectives and the relationship among members of the tribes, Indians oral literatures delicately present the metaphorical story reflecting human nature that younger generation deserves to comprehend.
The story of Glooscap The Teacher from Micmac tribe explains the metaphor of human nature which possesses both evil and good sides. The Micmac tribe is a branch of the Algonquian family, lived a migratory life in Nova Scotia, northern New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island (Rasmussen, 2000, p 336). Glooscap, the legendary hero of the Micmacs and their neighbors, the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy and the Abenaki, was a trickster-transformer capable of both good and evil.
First the men had to climb a great mountain, on the tip of which lay an overhanging cliff. To get down the other side of the mountain, the seven young men had to struggle over the edge of the cliff and descend a steep stone wall into the valley below. Fearful and distrusting men could not make the descent, but brave and honest men could accomplish it with ease. (Wolfson, 2001, p 113)
This mythological story shows the journey of seven men to the west in which they have to bravely face all the coming obstacles during the journey. The obstacles are represented by the high mountains with a steep overhanging cliff on top, two deadly serpents, and a great dark cloud that separated the real world from the world beyond.
The struggle in life is the inevitable part of human life. In the effort to overcome the obstacles, a man should sharpen the good nature while bad nature only hampers the success in life.
Glooscap gave the man a small wish-package of medicine. But on his way home, the man could not help feeling the package, turning it around and around in his hand. Finally, his curiosity was too great, and he sat down to examine the parcel, then quickly opened it. Whoosh, out poured a stream of liquid onto the ground. It spread over the earth in all directions, and then it quickly disappeared. (Wolfson, 2001, p 114)
This story reminds the young generation of Native Americans to be careful in undertaking the journey of life.
The surrender to bad side of human nature eventually leads human to the wrong direction which destroys their life.
Meanwhile, the good side will assist human to undergo the journey of life. The story of Glooscap presents the analogical feature of trickster as the most common mythological figure in Native Americans oral literature.
Trickster tales were among the most entertaining these specialists presented; the combination of buffoonery, scandalous behavior, and drama in the tales made them good listening. In addition, trickster tales were presented as morality tales for children. As the trickster found himself in trouble because of excessive pride, lust, or greed, children could be reminded of proper behavior (Barrett, 2004, p 765). The trickster tales are effective to inherit the perspective of native Indians that the duality of human nature creates the balance and harmony between the humanity and the ability of the nature to support life.
Each native story is a part of a greater whole, a continuum of stories that has neither a beginning nor an end.
Each story in its own way fills in a section of the larger narrative, giving us a fuller sense of life.