Utilizing Oral Traditions: Some Concerns Raised by Recent Ojibwe Studies; a Review Essay

Utilizing Oral Traditions: Some Concerns Raised by Recent Ojibwe Studies; a Review Essay Rebecca Kugel Thomas W. Overholt and J. Baird Callicott, Clothed-in-Fur and Other Tales: A n Introduction to an Ojibwa World View(Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982). 198 pp. $23.00, Cloth. $11.00 Paper. Vivian J. Rohrl, Change for Continuity: The People of a Thousand Lakes (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982). 269 pp. $22.00 Cloth. $11.50 Paper. Victor Barnouw, Wisconsin Chippewa Myths and Tales; and Their Relation to Chippewu Life (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977). 304 pp. $25.00 Cloth. $9.95 Paper. Basil Johnston, Ojibway Heritage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976). 171 pp. $11.95 Cloth. Basil Johnston, Moose Meat and Wild Rice (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, Ltd., 1978). 188 pp. $16.95 Cloth. Eighty years ago Franz Boas urged that oral traditions be collected from Native peoples. He was convinced that such traditions could shed important light on the cultures and world views of non-Western tribal peoples. To date, the information contained in Native oral traditions has not been systematically utilized by scholars as Boas suggested it could be. The work of the exceptional few stands in contrast and once more proves the rule. These five books on the Ojibwe people attempt in varying degrees to utilize oral traditions to gain a better understanding of how Ojibwe people thought and viewed themselves, their society and the world around them. The theoretical constructs the five authors employ vary widely, as do their interpretations. Taken as a whole, these books demonstrate the difficulties inherent in utilizing oral traditions. They point up how badly a general theoretical orientation is needed if scholars are to use oral traditions to understand a culture on its own terms