Native American Oral Tradition: Collaboration and Interpretation

This collection provides a benchmark that helps secure the position of collaboration between Native American and non-Native American scholars in the forefront of study of Native oral traditions. Seven sets of intercultural authors present Native American oral texts with commentary, exploring dimensions of perspective, discovery, and meaning that emerge through collaborative translation and interpretation. The texts studied all come from the American West but include a rich variety of material, since their tribal sources range from the Yupik in the Arctic to the Yaqui in the Sonoran Desert.

This presentation of jointly authored work is timely: it addresses increasing interest in, calls for, and movement toward reflexivity in the relationships between scholars and the Native communities they study, and it responds to the renewed commitment in those communities to asserting more control over representations of their traditions. Although Native and academic communities have long tried to work together in the study of culture and literature, the relationship has been awkward and imbalanced toward the academics. In many cases, the contributions of Native assistants, informants, translators, and field workers to the work of professional ethnographers has been inadequately credited, ignored, or only recently uncovered. Native Americans usually have not participated in planning and writing such projects. Native American Oral Traditions provides models for overcoming such obstacles to interpreting and understanding Native oral literature in relation to the communities and cultures from which it comes.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874214157
• ISBN13: 9780874214154
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Presents oral Native American stores and insightful comments

Native American Oral Traditions: Collaboration And Interpretation is an impressive collection of seven sets of intercultural authors, who present oral Native American stores with insightful commentary that adds perspective and discovery to these already fascinating stories. This body of oral literature, all of which comes from the American West, has been passed down through centuries and includes material from tribal sources ranging from the Yupik in the Arctic to the Yaqui in the Sonora Desert. Highly recommended for Native American Studies reading lists and reference collections.