The power of words

Literature

The power of words Recording the Gilbertese oral tradition in writing

By Nicolas

Rothwell

The pioneering I-Kiribati ethnologist, Kambati Uriam, has an unusually direct personal connec tion with the tales and historical nar ratives that form the subject of In Their Own Words, the most important study yet published of Gilbertese oral tradition. Uriam recounts, at one point in this detailed and enthralling account, his own memory of listening to a particular tale-teller, who was keen to make his audiences laugh.

“As far as I can recall from my child hood,” writes Uriam, “he used to be an occasional visitor to our home to tell jokes and share his stories.

I loved his stories, but I hated his smok ing pipe which he would not hesitate to bum me with every time I dozed off to sleep. ” The anecdote gives something of the flavour of this unusual, indeed path-break ing, book: engaged and informed, embrac ing both the objectivity of anthropological study and the commitment of a patriotic history.

The doyen of studies of Kiribati soci ety, H E Maude, notes in his forward that Uriam’s work will be definitive, “as writ ing has made the composition of new oral traditions unnecessary - but it is hoped it will prove to be the prototype for similar studies covering the traditions of other Pacific Island groups”.

Uriam has an intriguing aim, which is more than fulfilled by this detailed, schol arly and suggestive work.

He hopes to trace Gilbertese history through the oral tradition that flourished for centuries on these low islands strewn through the heart of the great ocean.

His argument is that the Gilbertese tales preserve a detailed version of the historic

past - as understood by the people of the islands. For generations, they have been handed down by word of mouth, providing a factual record that tallies strikingly with the findings now emerging from other avenues of investigation. Uriam found, during his field-work, that his own sense of history deepened: “If there is a hope I wish to convey,” he writes, “it is that the Gilbertese people will take pride in being I- Kiribati and treasure with all jealousy the wisdom and knowledge of their ances tors as found in the traditions.”

Through a swirling, complex recreation of the tales and their telling, their style and their content, but above all their place in the community, Uriam succeeds in captur ing the subtle, shimmering quality of the oral narrative as one of the key elements in Gilbertese self-definition: art-form, magi cal incantation, historical record, political weapon - the tale was all of these and served as a means of making claims and aligning relations between families, groups and islands.

For, as In Their Own Words quickly makes plain, there are great variations between the different islands, both in pre sent character and in history.

Indeed, Uriam spends much time pick ing apart the traditional stories to show how well they reflect the patterns of settle ment, the various ancestor groups, the points of origin and way-stages in the jour neys of the first islanders to the atolls.

This, then, is the tracing of history and geographic spread through mythology and, as such, it has a certain political com ponent, for, as Uriam underlines, the com ing of European culture to. Kiribati has coincided with the effective ending of the oral tradition and the descent of a feeling of impotence, of lack of ability to control and dispose of one’s own fate.

In these conditions, the disappearance of the tales and tale-tellers from Kiribati society has an even more devastating effect because of what the tales could do for their society: “Apart from giving information concerning the activities of the ancestors,

or providing identity, they offer explana

tions for social processes and cultural activities as they are or should be.

But, more importantly, oral traditions provide a charter for communal reflection and innovation, and courage to the com munities to change for a better society.

They are inseparable from communities: without traditions there are no communi ties, and vice versa.”

Hence, the urgency of Uriam’s quest to trace and capture the traditions, to keep their memory alive, to provide examples of the connection between the narratives, the functioning of that particularly Gilbertese social and political organism, the Maneaba, and the continuing evolution of the society of the independent nation of Kiribati.

Preservation of oral tradition is viewed by Uriam as vital, for, as he puts it mov ingly, the past has a crucial role to play; in fact, it is, or has been, almost everything: “It provided a Gilbertese with knowledge and skills, joy and laughter, friends and enemies, and land and wealth to live and enjoy a long and contented life.”

There are, unfortunately, signs of a revival of tradition - a revival Uriam is keen to encourage, and one which he believes is amply justified, given the tremendous achievements of customary Gilbertese society as the most efficient specialised atoll culture in the world.

Yet there is a profound threat to the endurance of this society; the same threat that has already taken its toll across the islands of the Pacific: “Today,” cautions Uriam, “the community ethos, its ethics and values, has been disrupted by a rash of foreign influences, for the most part European.

Gilbertese life is in a state of flux: hous ing, clothes, food, material culture, all are changing, and with them many of the cer tainties, the motivations, aspirations and pleasures that made life meaningful in the past.

Change must come; the danger lies that with it Gilbertese society will, unless we are alert and careful, become an amor phous and rootless mass of individuals, without pride in the past or hope for the future.”

It is a warning that applies, of course, to all the Pacific’s surviving traditional cultures. ■

• In Their Own Words - History and Society in Gilbertese Oral Tradition by Kambati K Uriam, published by the Journal of Pacific History, Australia,

1996. Sa3O.