The Displacement of Indigenous Oral History

Abstract

This chapter examines the evolution of oral history and oral tradition as two separate fields of study with their own associations, journals, theories, and definitions. It considers how these fields have been viewed and engaged with by indigenous writers, with a particular emphasis on scholarship out of Aotearoa New Zealand. Oral history and oral tradition have often been considered the same, but over the past century have been presented as two distinctively different fields with their own theories, methods, and emphases. This chapter surveys the seminal writing and definitions popularized in oral history and tradition, which include the idea of oral history as a methodology and interview practice and oral traditions as predominantly the study of ballads and folk songs. It explores some of the arguments about the orality or textuality of oral sources, and the differing focus oral traditionalists and oral historians have proposed in their evolving theories and politics.