Introduction
“As diasporic and transnational theory and literary studies continue to push to the forefront of critical attention the complexities of identity and subjectivity in a globalized world, focusing on sound identities promises to be a fruitful avenue of research applicable to work in all genres and by writers from diverse cultural communities.” (Gingell, 130)
Historically, scholars have long perceived orality and literacy to be on separate sides of the linguistic chasm, unable to co-exist, and seemingly destined for distinction. In particular, scholars such as Walter J. Ong have viewed orality as a primitive ancestor to literacy, and have framed orality and literacy in evolutionary terms. However, the recent scholarship has changed. Scholars like Peter Dickinson have contributed commentary on the matter, referring to the issue as the “‘Great Divide’ in orality-literacy studies,” but have urged for the recontextualization of the debate within “a continuum of cultural and linguistic difference” (320).
In light of this, the YAWP team’s research has examined how the rigid dichotomy of the orality-literacy debate can be diminished. Subsequently, our investigation has led us to examine how contemporary Indigenous writers have engaged with orality and literacy in order to prove the prowess and relevance of their cultures against the oppressive forces of White settler perspectives. To complement our research, we have discovered an intersection with Susan Gingell’s discussion of “sound identities” and our sister site “Indigenous Literature.” By examining the issues of orality and literacy through a variety of angles, we hope to illuminate these interdisciplinary connections while connecting them to modern day contexts.
In short, our research of orality and literacy will be greatly assisted by the adoption of a retrospective perspective. Through this linguistic lens, we will be able to observe the loss of Indigenous traditions, the method of these traditions are being revivified, and the benefits of regaining them through new societal contexts and artistic mediums.
Central Points, Issues & Questions
- How may sound identity, and a regaining and proliferation of language help Indigenous communities mitigate and heal from the injustices of colonization and globalization?
- What is the Native definition of orality and why is it important that it is demonstrated and defined by Native people, not non-Native academics and researchers?
- What are the possible benefits of listening and accepting the sound identity of Indigenous communities, and what are the ways that sound identity-oriented education, scholarly discourse, and rehabilitation can be readily established, maintained, and grown upon within Canadian society?
- Do orality and literacy interconnect in the modern global community, including the workplace?
- Hopes for the future of Canadian literature: increased visibility of Indigenous writers/performers; opening up of conventional conceptions of literature to include orature, oral/textual/visual forms of storytelling; and use of literature combined with cultural recognition towards social/epistemic justice ends.
- Beyond the problem of language death, which can be traced with statistics and concrete reports, how can we analyze the more abstract concept of identity death in mainstream media, such as film? As the purpose of this conference is to tackle and explore the ways in which orality and the control of one’s own voice is fundamental to their identity, we want to ask how are we supposed to interpret portrayals of Indigenous peoples and their stories in film, literature, poetry and other artistic mediums?
Perspectives
1. “…to what extent does the innovation of Indigenous traditions in light of dramatic societal change affect the perspective of Indigenous ideologies by dominant social structures?” (Ha, “Bibliography”)
- This quotation is extracted from the dialogue on our partner group’s annotated bibliography. Brendan is referencing Widenhorn’s article, and this quotation was chosen to highlight the importance of epistemic justice when moving forward with any intervention that posits to integrate Indigenous knowledge and Western worldviews.
- Epistemic justice can be defined as “the presentation as invalid of forms of knowledge that differ from dominant rationality” (Widenhorn, 378).
- The issue of epistemic justice is a significant factor in the question of who defines and demonstrates Indigenous orality.
- Epistemic justice is of particular import for policy makers and researchers, as it is easy to get waylaid and negatively impact Indigenous ideologies if one is not completely committed to enacting epistemic justice in their work.
2. “[Âphitawikosisân] says that the Indigenous law provides a different world view that is not translatable. Without that law, people get lost, as their cultural compass is gone….The act of challenging the colonizer’s subjective biased process of acceptable communication is “narrative decolonization” as James Cox would say, and it is an important part of cultural preservation” (Davis Johnston, “Annotated Bibliography”)
- This quotation is extracted from a comment on our group’s annotated bibliography, which was in response to this article. Apihtawikosisan highlights the critical importance of Indigenous language to maintaining a “whole culture” (“Indigenous languages critical to cultural flourishing”). This, our group would argue, is the grounding tenant Gingell’s intervention is based on – the importance of orality and language (or sound identity) to diverse cultures.
- Beyond literature, the study of orality and Indigenous language has wider applications. Âphitawikosisân writes: “…When we lose our languages, we lose our orality as well, because the dominant culture is very much based on written literacy…Rather than building on the strengths within our oral cultures, we are forced to operate within a system of knowledge transmission that is fundamentally at odds with our own.” (“Indigenous languages critical to cultural flourishing”).
3. “As in my citations I realized that written literature helped the Haudenosaunee people put their historical, theological and cultural facts into their scholarly work. This way it allowed them to speak about their experiences and allow the readers to understand how their community works.” (Kwok, “Annotated Bibliography”).
- This quotation is extracted from a comment on our group’s annotated bibliography, which was in response to Dickinson’s article about elements of orality in literacy. In his article, Dickinson describes how orality is an essential building block of Indigenous literature, regardless of whether it is spoken or written down. Althea has described how written literature has helped preserve cultural moments of the Haudenosaunee people, and has recognized that there is an intersection between the spheres of orality and literacy within this movement.
- This mirrors maneuvers Neal McLeod makes in his book, Cree Narrative Memory as discussed in Gingell’s CanLit article. The book of poetry features nêhiyawêwin (Cree language) in various moments within the text, resonating the “sound identity” of the Cree nation with each appearance of a phrase, word or sentence. Gingell writes that this incorporation is “an attempt to decolonize nêhiyaw-askiy, Cree territory, making it echo again with the sound of Cree language” (126).
- Likewise, Margery Fee’s article discusses Ruby Slipperjack’s Honour the Sun. In a manner that is similar to the Haudenosaunee people’s recording of their cultural traditions, as well as Neal McLeod’s poems, Slipperjack also incorporates the linguistic aspects of her culture (the Ojibwe Nation) within her tome. Fee describes that writing like Slipperjack’s may confuse non-Indigenous scholars. They must “realize that they are no longer post-colonials ‘writing back’ to Empire: they are now the target of a colonized people’s resistance” (Fee 25).
Conclusions
Our research began with Gingell’s idea that textualized orality “helps [Indigenous communities] to create a sound identity in two senses, one grounded in particular music(s) [and languages] and one that is sound in the sense of healthy and strong” (Gingell, 127). We approached our intervention strategy with a retrospective perspective, by researching articles that contained the words of the Elders, and hearkened to the medicine wheel worldview as a means to rehabilitate, reauthenticate, and rejuvenate the Indigenous sound identity in Canada.
We have discovered various ways to intervene in the future of Canadian literature, in order to maintain the sound identity that is so vital to Indigenous communities across Canada. One significant step that must be taken is to strengthen and grow the education of Indigenous culture and language in schools, and across scholarly fields. Indeed, we have found that sound identities help to shape the cultural, spiritual, and artistic expressions and beliefs of Indigenous communities across Canada, which reinforces the importance of an empathetic and long overdue education into this cultural sound. With the vast amount of information readily available already in schools, online, in rehabilitation centres, and most important of all, from the spoken and recorded oral storytelling traditions of the Elders of the Indigenous communities in Canada.
The next, and more vital aspect within our strategy for intervening, is simply to listen, and accept; through our research, we have found that the only way to understand and truly accept another sound identity is to hearken to the past, which is done so by the oral/aural storytelling traditions of the Elders in Indigenous communities across the world. Ever since colonization and globalization began, the Western perspective, and non-oral, canonic literary traditions have served to disenfranchise and utterly degrade those with different sound identities, the fabricated ‘other’ in society.
Through residential schools and other forms of assimilation and cultural genocide, the English settler government in Canada ultimately attempted to remove the voices of the Indigenous communities, strip their inherent sound identities, and did so by refusing to listen. It is time that we as a society, scholars and citizens alike, open our ears and hear the sounds of the oppressed Indigenous cultures whose land we inhabit; by listening to the words of the Elders, and incorporating aspects of Indigenous orality into the future of Canadian literature, we as a society may help to decolonize the Indigenous communities we live side by side with, and ultimately work together to revitalize the authority and significance of the Indigenous sound identity.
Further Research
One area of work that I would like to research in future includes the process of “Othering” in non-Native and Native interactions and generally in the global environment. To the extent that people retain their orality and aurality they can be considered the “Other” in an ever increasingly settler English world and be excluded from inclusion in literature because of their sound identities. Such things as language, accents (even if minor), songs and other aspects of sound identities can very quickly isolate and exclude.
Another area that requires further research is how language death, a very real concept that can be supported with evidence, impacts Indigenous peoples on an individual level and how it defines their communities. As Gingell has pointed to in her article, there is an identifiable increase in honouring their language and she provides the example of an Indigenous poet who incorporates the language of his people into a predominantly English poem. This increase can be likened to a reclamation project of sorts and while evidence can be recorded that traces the rise or decrease of education and use, the more abstract questions remain: how can the preservation of Indigenous language be identified in art, in business, in day-to-day life and how can this language be used as a tool to reclaim sound identities that have been robbed? There is no statistic measurement for this so something along the lines of extensive interviews inside these communities, and the communities which most closely interact with Indigenous people, should be recorded. There are valuable voices in our province and it would be a great shame, and a tragedy, to lose them.
In summary, it can be concluded from our conference, and the various paths that we have ventured into—questions of performance, of industry, of orality, of art, of preservation and of education—that the research and scholarly efforts made now cannot remedy the destructive effects of a history in BC and Canada at large that has worked to suppresses Indigenous sound identities. What research can do, however, is ensure that future voices are not lost and that those at the risk of being completely lost can be salvaged and celebrated.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Peter. Canadian Journal of Native Studies: ‘Orality in Literacy’: Listening to Indigenous Writing. 14 Vol. Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 01/01/1994. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.
Fee, Margery. Journal of Intercultural Studies: Writing Orality: Interpreting Literature in English by Aboriginal Writers in North America, Australia and New Zealand. 18 Vol. River Seine Publications, 04/01/1997. Web. 9 Apr. 2016.
Ha, Brendan. “Bibliography” [comment]. Indigenous Literature. ENGL 470A, UBC. Web. 19 April 2016.