Do Oral Traditions Have Any Value in Reconstructing the Past?

By: Ethan Chan

In Oral Traditions as History, Jan Vansina defines oral traditions as “as verbal messages which are reported statements from the past beyond the present generation.” Oral traditions can be found in many oral societies, including Indigenous groups in Canada, Australia, and Africa. However, in the study of these oral societies, there has been widespread debate on the value of oral traditions. Many academics have pondered whether these traditions can aid in the reconstruction of the past.

When contemplating the meaning and value of oral tradition, the historian should consider three different perspectives of oral tradition.

1. Oral traditions have too many limitations and thus have no historical value.

2. Oral traditions have many advantages and have broad historical value.

3. Or should historians disregard Western methodologies of history and just recognize that oral societies have a different way of viewing the past. Do oral traditions need to apply a firmness of dates, have archives, chronologies, etc., or can they just be considered as a different form of historical methodology that has the same value as other historical sources?

The most prominent limitation of oral traditions is its characteristics of selectivity and interpretation. In Oral Historiography, David Hengie suggests that the longer the chain of transmission of oral tradition, the larger the losses. This is a result of selectivity of specific parts of events, political motivations, the futility of memory, and so forth. The attitude of the limitations of oral traditions is best demonstrated by Adam Ferguson, in his book, An Essay on the History of Civil Society. He remarks that although oral traditions first contain some resemblance of truth, they will inevitably vary with the imagination of those by whom theory is transmitted.

Nonetheless, oral traditions do have benefits to historical reconstruction. Vansina asserts that oral traditions are irreplaceable because not only do they contain history and cultures that would have been lost but because they are sources from the “from the inside.” Oral traditions represent the histories of the masses, not just history that is written only by the elite literati. Instead of only publishing writers from outside the community, oral traditions allow the informants to select their own topics of interest and interpret the tradition how they would like to present it. By giving voices to marginalized communities, oral traditions prevent outsider biases, perspectives, and political stances. Thus, history can become more culture-specific, less anachronistic, and ethnocentric.

In my opinion, a combination of both b) and c) is the best perspective when trying to decide whether oral traditions have a role in the reconstruction of the past. To just consider a), is a failure to recognize that written history can be as narrativized as oral tradition. Hayden White describes all of history as a literary narrative, where the historian is the icon of the historical structure. Since no historian can exclude biases, political stances, and personal perspectives when writing, how can one criticize oral traditions as a historical resource, when no source either written or not, be fool-proof? As Kit de Waal said, by not exoticizing, and instead portraying a rich culture full of nuances, diversity, and reality, writers can become beneficial to oral societies. And oral traditions do just that. Oral traditions allow oral societies such as Indigenous communities to have their voices heard on an international scale.

Works Cited

Adam Ferguson and Fania Oz-Salzberger, An Essay on the History of Civil Society. (New

York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996.), 112.

Henige, David P. Oral Historiography. New York: Longman Inc., 1982.

Vansina, Jan. Oral Tradition as History. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press,

1985.

Waal, Kit de. “Don't Dip Your Pen in Someone Else's Blood: Writers and 'the Other'.” The Irish

Times. The Irish Times, June 30, 2018. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/don- t-dip-your-pen-in-someone-else-s-blood-writers-and-the-other-1.3533819.

White, Hayden. "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact." Clio 3, no. 3 (Jun 01, 1974):

https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/historical-text-as-literary- artifact/docview/1300303656/se-2?accountid=6180.

Image Citation

Weiss, William E. Indigenous Oral History. Indigenous Oral Histories and Primary Sources.

Buffalo Bill Historical Center/The Art Archive, October 30, 2020.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indigenous-oral-histories-and- primary-sources.