Indigenous stories and storytellers

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Indigenous stories and storytellers

• Harriet Deacon Inez Stephney
• HSRC

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Storytelling

• Stories are a key part of our rich legacy of
  intangible heritage language, memory, ritual,
  traditional knowledge systems, practices, etc.
• This presentation is about
• Collecting indigenous stories
• Recognising indigenous storytellers

Gavin Jantjes
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What do we mean by a story?

• Folktale / parable / Nonwane / Ntsomi
• Fairytale / buntsomi
• Legend
• Praise poem (imbongi / izibongo tradition)
• Difela
• Proverb
• Life history Historical narrative / siganeko or
  mbali (even modern ones like the TRC narratives)

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Why are stories important?

• All societies tell stories to their children, and
  each other, as forms of entertainment and
  education. Stories bring the community and its
  members together in a shared understanding of the
  world and their place in it.
• The medium of language is as important as the
  message. In fact, folktales, legends, proverbs,
  epics and praise songs in the indigenous
  languages,are the bedrock of any meaningful
  national literature (Bhebe 2002)
• Even if a story is about talking frogs or talking
  dogs, it speaks to real issues. Storytellers
  may deal in fantasy images, but those images
  are meant to shape our experience of the real
  (Scheub 1996150)

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Stories are our knowledge base

• Stories are ways of transmitting and safeguarding
  knowledge about society and the world.
• This includes knowledge about
• Who we are and where we come from (identity,
  history)
• How society should work (spirituality, moral
  issues, education, beauty, power)
• How the world works (philosophy, agriculture,
  medicine, science)

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Stories tell us how the world began

• The creation story of Ngiyaampaa country in
  Australia (told by Aunty Beryl Carmichael) tells
  how the ancestral spirit Guthi-Guthi calls on the
  water serpent Weowie to come out of the mountain
  so that the land can become green
• The shepherd trickster Huveane, the first human
  in BaPedi and BaVenda legend, who made a baby
  with clay and breathed life into it

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Stories tell us about nature

• Scientists today find stories useful in learning
  about the geology of Northwestern America.
  Indigenous people there still tell stories about
  roaring two-headed serpents and epic battles
  between Thunderbird and whale that relate to
  large earthquakes around AD 900 and 1700 that
  caused massive flooding, tsunamis and landslides.
  
• Among the Tswana, the stars of Orion's sword are
  traditionally known as dintsa le Dikolobe',
  three dogs chasing the three pigs of Orion's
  belt. Warthogs have their litters while Orion is
  prominent in the sky --- frequently litters of
  three

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Stories tell us how to make rain

• Our mothers used to say that when a star falls
  from the sky, it goes into a waterpit. As it
  enters the waterpit, it sounds like a quiver
  enters water which also lives, as does he who is
  a !gixa For this is the water from which
  !giten are wont to fetch water-bull
• Dia!kwain, a San man from the Katkop hills, 1870s
  (direct translation by W. Bleek L. Lloyd)

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Stories tell us about history

• The Ngoni of Mzimba district in Malawi sing
  praise poems that tell the history of Ngoni
  chiefs and clans which illustrates their
  historical link to Zwangendaba and the Zulu
• Their proverbs still use the Nguni language,
  although its use is fast fading Iqhude alikhale
  emzini wabanye (the cockerel does not sing in a
  foreign land)

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Stories tell us who we are

• As in Mbekis I am an African speech, the
  storyteller relates the past, shaping a shared
  reality that people can use to develop a sense of
  identity and imagine the present and the future.
• I am an African
• I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, to
  the Khoi and the San, the migrants who left
  Europe to find a new home on our native land In
  my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves
  who came from the East My mind and my knowledge
  of myself is formed by the victories that are the
  jewels in our African crown, the victories we
  earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as
  Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the
  Berbers of the desert. I am a child of
  Nongqause
• I am born of a people who would not tolerate
  oppression The constitution whose adoption we
  celebrate aims to open the doors so that those
  who were disadvantaged can assume their place in
  society as equals Today, it feels good to be an
  African.
• Thabo Mbeki

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Stories teach moral lessons

• In Decolonizing the Mind, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
  discusses the importance of oral literature in
  his childhood. He says
• I can vividly recall those evenings of
  storytelling around the fire side. It was mostly
  the grown ups telling the children but everybody
  was interested and involved. We children would
  retell the stories the following day to other
  children who worked in the fields
• Hare being small, weak, but full of innovative
  wit, was our hero. We identified with him as he
  struggled against the brutes of prey like lion,
  leopard and hyena. His victories were our
  victories and we learnt that the apparently weak
  can outwit the strong.

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The danger of greed

• When Nomxakazo is born, her warlord father
  promises her when she comes of age so many cattle
  that their dust would cover the sun. At her
  insistence, he acquires enough cattle through
  war, but afterwards, she is captured by his
  enemies to compensate, her parents become
  impoverished and on her return to them, she
  marries the son of one of her fathers former
  enemies.
• AC Jordan, Tales from Southern Africa
• Abner Nyamende, The relevance of folktales to
  21st century society

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Stories tell us what happens when we die

• A star does in this manner, at the time when our
  heart falls down, that is the time when the star
  also falls down while the star feels that our
  heart falls over For the stars know the time at
  which we die. The star tells the other people who
  do not know that we have died.
• Dia!kwain, a San man from the Katkop hills, 1870s
  (direct translation by W. Bleek L. Lloyd)

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Collecting stories is not new

• For centuries, people have protected their
  stories from loss by telling them over and over
  again.
• There have also been a number of efforts to
  document stories in Europe and Africa since the
  19th century.
• Encouraging people to submit stories to the Xhosa
  newspaper Indaba in 1862, Tiyo Soga said, The
  activities of a nation are more than cattle,
  money or food Fables must be retold what was
  history or legend should be recounted.

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Why collect stories?

• Safeguard our intangible heritage (the practice
  of storytelling and the content of stories)
• Enrich and promote indigenous identities
• Enrich national identity
• Honour neglected stories and storytellers
• Value and access indigenous cultural, historical
  and scientific knowledge for communities, and
  where appropriate, for the nation and the world
• Distribute commercial benefit, if any, to owners
  of indigenous knowledge but minimize negative
  impact on social cohesion or heritage practices

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Why focus on indigenous stories?

• Stories are particularly important in societies
  that value orality, which include many indigenous
  societies in Africa
• Under colonialism and Apartheid, and with
  industrialisation and migration, indigenous
  African communities have experienced massive
  social disruption and loss of social cohesion
• In this process, stories have been neglected and
  devalued
• Many stories, and mechanisms for transmitting
  them have been radically changed or even lost

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Finding neglected stories

• Getting out into rural communities Kramers
  music project
• Looking in unexpected places, looking at little
  stories as well as grand narratives
• Looking in our own communities for
  taken-for-granted stories
• Recognising indigenous stories in life histories
  the heritage we hold within us
• Indigenous language texts collected in the past

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Programs to collect stories

• Enhance national facilitating, coordinating and
  funding capacity
• Broaden programs on indigenous knowledge to
  include storytelling
• Gather information on best practices
• Promote storytelling in indigenous languages
• Promote community involvement and ownership of
  programs
• Link storytelling heritage to development and
  identity
• Protect intellectual property rights of
  storytellers and communities
• Allow them to control who has access to secret
  and sacred stories
• Archive stories appropriately

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Who owns a story?

• Storytellers should be recognised and rewarded
  for their skill in telling stories (e.g. Living
  Human Treasures)
• But the intellectual property of indigenous
  stories often belongs to a larger community,
  even when stories are already in the public
  domain
• There have been cases where corporates have
  patented indigenous knowledge and taken the
  benefit from commercial use of it
• We need to protect the rights of the community
  over traditional stories and the knowledge in
  them, and to help people rediscover heritage that
  has been lost

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Understanding change over time

• Stories are not always told in the same way
• People have different reasons for telling stories
• Change is a necessary part of a storys
  life-blood they are always being made relevant
  to the present
• We need to document and understand changes in
  stories, not ignore or resent them
• Writing stories down fixes them in time, helping
  us to track changes, but in doing so we often
  lose elements of performance, context and gesture

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Audience and format

• Social conventions affect who can say what to
  whom, how, when and where
• The age, gender, knowledge and status of the
  audience affects how a story is told
• People often give stories different levels of
  detail and content for community and outsider
  audiences
• Public and private versions of stories
• Narrative formats (e.g. praise poem, ntsomi) also
  affect how a story is told

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Places for stories

• Among Sotho-Tswana and Ndebele, women
  traditionally told fictional tales in the hut
  area, often to younger children and teenage girls
  
• Men told historical stories in public spaces
  between huts, often to young men before
  initiation. A boy receives his training at the
  mens place Ngwanaa mosimane o seya molao
  kxorong
• These storytelling traditions changed as with
  resettlement under apartheid, the public spaces
  (kgoro) were lost

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Getting the stories we deserve

• We need to understand
• How have stories changed over time?
• Who is telling stories and for what reason?
• How are the stories affected by who is collecting
  stories, and for what purpose?
• Good preparation, careful research design and
  analysis earns the best range of stories and the
  capacity to understand them

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Conclusion

• Stories help us to understand who we are, where
  we come from, and how to live in the world
• Indigenous stories, devalued and neglected in the
  past, need special promotion and protection
• Storytellers need encouragement to continue
  telling stories
• Researchers should be trained to help collect
  stories in their own communities in a coordinated
  series of programs
• These stories need to be responsibly used and
  carefully archived
• Communities need assistance to protect their
  rights over commercially useful information and
  secret or sacred stories

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Acknowledgements

• Wells, Julia (Rhodes University and NHC Council)
• Manetsi, Thabo (SAHRA)
• Van Wyk, Carol (Freedom Park)
• Deacon, HJ with Dondolo, L, Mrubata, M and
  Prosalendis, S. The subtle power of intangible
  heritage (2004)
• Bhebe, N. Oral tradition in Southern Africa
  (2002)
• Hofmeyr, I We Spend our Years as a Tale that is
  Told Oral Historical Storytelling in a South
  African Chiefdom (1993)
• Jordan, AC Tale, Teller and Audience cited in
  N. Masilela, The Modern world of Xhosa Folklore
• Scheub, H The tongue is fire South African
  storytellers and apartheid (1996)
• Nyamende, A Isikhundla Sababhali on Lit Net
  (www.litnet.co.za)

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Examples of good practice

• First Nations American stories analysed as
  literature in US schools Stories across Africa
  project (PRAESA)
• SA San Institute (SASI) community researchers in
  Botswana and SA
• Living Human Treasures system in East Asian
  countries
• IKS policy launched by DST in March 2005
• HOODIA benefit sharing agreement in SA Patents
  amendment bill (2005) protects indigenous
  communities from others patenting their knowledge
• AITSIS indigenous knowledge database and research
  in Australia
• Traditional knowledge digital library in India
  (used as a model for the planned IK digital
  library in SA)