Oral Traditions

This research theme investigates the complex interaction of legal instruments—such as cultural property law, Indigenous rights, and copyright law—in mediating control, ownership, and safeguarding of Indigenous oral traditions. It matters because these traditions, when documented or digitized, risk misappropriation, distortion, and loss of Indigenous agency. Understanding the implications of legal protections in different stages of oral tradition documentation is crucial to ensuring both preservation and community control.

This theme focuses on the ethnographic and cultural insights into how oral traditions function as active processes of intergenerational knowledge transmission, community identity maintenance, and social education in societies lacking or limiting written historical records. Emphasizing local case studies, it emphasizes the dynamic, performative, and pedagogical dimensions of oral knowledge systems and their role in confronting changing social realities.