Aboriginal Oral Traditions: Theory, Practice, Ethics (2008) Renée Hulan and Renate Eigenbrod, editors

Traditions: Theory, Practice, Ethics originated from ideas presented at a conference organized by the Gorsebrook Research Institute at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in April, 2005.Hulan and Eigenbrod, two of the conference's organizers, fondly recall the sequence of panels, discussions, and events they attended as a "dialogue that flowed from session to session over the three days" (p.9).Though unable, and unwilling, to reduce the more "freeflowing" (p.10) segments of the conference to the rigidity of textual form, the editors invited participants to submit papers produced as an offshoot of these lively debates.The authors note that Rather than trying to capture what happened during those three days, this is an attempt to communicate ideas expressed and developed in a new way.With this collection of essays we hope to extend the oral exchanges of the conference by distributing them in a new context and in printed form, accessible to libraries, schools and communities.In this way we hope to give the conference another life … (p.10)The result is a collection of essays that, at its best, encourages the reader to rethink ingrained assumptions about the purpose and significance of Aboriginal oral traditions.Tradition is a loaded word, often defined simplistically as a sense of continuity with the past without acknowledging the role of present-day adaptation and innovation.Even the term oral continues to be framed in a negative light, perpetually compared to the universal western standard of written communication.Hulan and Eigenbrod argue that, in spite of the Supreme Court of Canada's formal approval of oral evidence, "the colonial binary . . . of the oral and the written" remains a strong force in Canadian society (p.11).The editors attempt to redress the balance by calling attention to oral culture's continued importance to First Nations groups.Orality is not the by-product of an illiterate society that formerly lacked a better alternative for documenting its past.Rather, it constitutes a chosen method of communication that, even today, best represents the spiritual and social values of the Indigenous nations in the country.The book's contributors reinforce this point by highlighting the importance of oral communication in present-day scenarios.Several authors affirm that spoken language enables Aboriginal peoples to express themselves using their true voices.Andrea Bear Nicholas argues, for instance, that to deny children access to their Native languages robs them of their sense of 258

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