Incredible Folklore Essay!

An essay that has been well sought after and downloaded is the essay "Reconstituting Oceanic Folktales", published in the University of Hawaii online publication: Scholarspace. It is one of those rare essays I have written and published as an online publication.

I include excerpt from the essay here.

Indigenous communities in Oceania have always used folktales to explain their social, psychological, political, and cultural environment. This tradition continues today in the cultural productions of many Pacific writers, artists, and filmmakers. Their “texts” are often saturated with social and political discourses that challenge ideology, tradition, and power. I explore how scholars in various discursive traditions have used folktales as structures for viewing culture, society and events, and I do so in order to re-view folktales within an indigenous cultural production in Oceania.

Folktales as Social Cultural Texts

 

If we are to see folktales as “text” then we need to consider the definition of “text” as a social cultural production of society. We need also to attend to the specific demands of theory that address the existence of “text” as a constituting product of social and cultural imaginings. The first place to begin this inquiry is to consider text as a structure of feeling or experience as expressed by Raymond Williams in his discussion of the various discourses we produce in society to explain our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, utterances, and experiences. According to Williams, “…a ‘structure of feeling’ is a cultural hypothesis, actually derived from attempts to understand such elements and their connections in a generation or period, and needing always to be returned, interactively, to such evidence” (1977, 133). As a cultural text, folktales include "unusual anecdotes, initiations, wonder stories and animal tales" (Zipes, 2022, 28). They are affective in nature and cannot be reduced to belief systems, institutions, or explicit general relationships. As “structures of feeling,” folktales encompass much more than this, including elements of social and material experience not covered by concepts like ideology or worldview (Williams 1977, 133). Folktales contribute to the general folklore of a kindred group or people in a given time and space, where folk-lore is taken to mean stories of a kindred group or people who share at least one thing in common.

Folklore consists of artistic expressions that are “heavily governed by the tastes of the group” that performs or represents them (Toelken 1996, 266).  In folk performances we see “a continual tableau or paradigm more revealing of cultural worldview” that it is possible some of these expressions were created independently by their creators: “Nonetheless, as students of culture have shown, in terms of world view the distinctions between formal culture and folk culture are not as sharp as one would have imagined; apparently, little is exempt from functionings of cultural worldview” (Toelken 1996, 266). Independent emergence of folktales allowed the existence of distinct repertoire of folktales in Oceania. Our discussions will consider some of these folktales told within certain groups, but not in other groups, as is the case in a number of societies in Oceania.

The second consideration here is to think of folktales as texts in the Bakhtinian sense of it as an unending object of possibilities, with its own internally constructed structures of producing and reproducing meanings that are themselves open to further possible interpretations of meaning. Thus we have to consider folktale texts as existing within the social and political sphere of heterogenous commingling of worlds and peoples, of ideas and perspectives, of beliefs and experiences, of private and public discourses, and of new and old ways of knowing. A folktale text is a “subjective reflection of the objective world” and it is “an expression of consciousness” out of which we hold our reflection of the world as our reality (Bakhtin 1996, 113). It is through the notion of text that we take our departures in our various kinds of knowledge productions: “Proceeding from the text, they wander in various directions, grasp various bits of nature, social life, states of mind, and history, and combine them—sometimes with causal, sometimes with semantic, ties—and intermix statements with evaluations” (Bakhtin 1996, 113). We could also relate this view of texts to Julia Kristeva’s notion of text as a “mosaic of quotations” and by which she means: “any text is the absorption and transformation of another” (Kristeva cited in Hafstein 1996, 307). Kristeva’s notion of text is closer to Roland Barthes’ “conception of the text as plural, where the text is “woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages (which language is not?), antecedent or contemporary, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony” (Kristeva 1977, 160; Hafstein 1996, 307). The evocation of Kristeva and Barthes in this discussion is to highlight the easily recognizable link of the notion of text to their various discussions on text and intertextuality around objects of cultural analysis such as folklore in their written as well as verbal forms of utterance. Thus, folktales are also the final product of a mosaic of utterances and various co-mingling of texts and meta-texts that are ever present in different societies.

Indigenous authors, artists, scholars, and filmmakers have constructed contemporary works firmly within the influence of their own indigenous oral traditions. The European difference and separation between high and low cultures is absent in Oceania in as much as folktales have remained very much part of the cultural knowledge system of the people. But this does not make folktales any less structural, contextual, and necessary in Oceania than elsewhere. It does, however, call to mind the need to be clearer about where folktales fit into the generic term folklore. Toelken makes clear the distinctions by dividing folklore into three categories: “Verbal folklore (that is, expressions people make with words, usually in oral interchange), material folklore (expressions which use physical materials for their media), and customary folklore (expressions which exist through people’s action” (1996, 9). Our interest is to consider verbal folklore, which “includes genres like epics, ballads, lyric songs (lullabies, love songs), myths (stories of sacred or universal import which people, cultures, religions, and nations believe in), legends (stories of local import which people believe actually happened but they learnt about from someone else), memorates (culturally based first-person accounts and interpretations of striking incidents), [and] folktales and jokes (fictional stories which embody cultural values)…to name only a few of the most common”  (Toelken 1996, 9). As stories that embody cultural values folktales occupy the central textual function in the contemporary literature of Oceania.

Indigenous Oceanic Folktale Structures

For a long time I have been influenced by folktales, especially those that I learned as a child and read over the years. As a child growing up in an oral society the stories I heard were folktales from my Nagum Boiken society in Papua New Guinea. One of my favorites was the folktale on Lomo’ha, who unplugs a rock that is the doorway to the world of the spirits. The doorway opens into a passage leading to the spirit world. Lomo’ha follows this passage. He travels deep into the spirit world. In the spirit world Lomo’ha was treated with the highest honor, learnt their language, and returned some years later to his people. By this time Lomo’ha had lost his human language. He was unable to communicate with his people. It took the whole village to perform a ritual that lifted the spirits’ influence and brought him back to human society. I used this folktale as the structure of my poetry.

I explored the Nagum Boiken culture hero, Lomo’ha, in my poetry collection, Lomo’ha I am in Spirit’s Voice I Call (1991). I used one among many folktales from my own society to explore, reframe, and restructure the experiences of journeys outside of the village. The Lomo’ha folktale is used to capture the experience of journeys out of the village, learning European language, manners, behaviors, and culture. The loss of voice to the spirits meant Papua New Guineans have lost their cultures, languages, and attitudes to those of European cultures. In my exploration of Lomo’ha in my poetry I discovered that I could use the folktale structure to view my experiences and those of others.¹ The folktale structure served the purpose of framing experiences that involve the life of being born in a forest society, journeying into the depths of the western world, gaining education, and participating in intellectual engagement where I discovered the source of inspiration was always the experience of growing up in a world rich with folklore and mythology.

The use of folktale as poetic structures and frameworks for constructing literary works is not unique to my work. Other Pacific writers have also used folktale structures in constructing their writings.² Literary reproductions of Oceanic folklore proliferate in the writings of many Pacific Islanders. Pacific writers such as Patricia Grace, Caroline Sinavaiana, Sia Figiel, Robert Sullivan, and Haunani-Kay Trask have used Indigenous culture hero or heroine models to structure their own creative oeuvre. Grace makes references to female mythical figures such as Papatuanuku, Hine-Nui-te-Po and Mahuika in her novel Potiki (1986). Sinavaiana evokes the goddess Nafanua to restructure her experiences in Alchemies of Distance (2001). Robert Sullivan retells the stories of Maui, Tane and Hine Titama, Tawaki, Rata, and Kupe in his book Weaving Earth and Sky: Myths and Legends of Aotearoa (2002), Sia Figiel, like Sinavaiana, also approaches the Samoan war goddess Nafanua as a role model to capture the experiences of young Samoan girls growing up in a male dominated society. Haunani-Kay Trask invokes the volcano goddess Pele to capture the burden of her experience. The active presence of culture heroes or heroines in the work of these writers attests to the influence of folklore structures in the writings of Pacific Islanders.

From the early writings of Pacific Islanders to the present transfigurations of Pacific stories in films, myths and folktales have remained an important element, creating a “dialogue between the oral and written traditions in Pacific discourse” (Keown 2007, 182).³ The folktales transferred to the written form are either translated from vernaculars or are infused with other Pacific folktales and with “Western mythologies and ontologies, exploring the syncretic nature of postcolonial subjectivities” (Keown 2007, 183).⁴ In transferring folktale narratives to the literary form writers use folktales as the frame of reference to reconstruct their experiences in a complex world with its postmodern tensions and anxiety.⁵. The incorporation of Oceanic folktales in writing, art, or film makes Pacific Islanders view themselves through their own lenses. Through folktales Oceanic peoples view their histories, learn their cultures, and maintain a conscious link to the past, to the traditions of their ancestors, and to the geographies of their psychology, landscapes, and peoples.⁶

If in imaginative literary or artistic works from all over the world, writers, artists, and filmmakers have drawn inspiration from “folk-tale motifs in the formation of enduring cultural creations” (Zipes 1979, 9), in Oceania folktales have been infused with other texts to produce multifaceted literary, artistic, and cinematic representations, the frameworks of which are drawn from Oceania’s folk motifs. From major writers such as Albert Wendt, Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace, Vilsoni Hereniko, Epeli Hau’ofa, Russell Soaba, and John Kasaipwalova to little known writers such Ambrosyius Waiyin and Paschal Waisi the influence of the folktale motifs in their literary works is undeniable.

Reconstituting Oceanic Folktales

Through the creative reconstitutions of culture heroes like Maui, Pele, Nafanua, Sina, or Kulubob, Manup, and Lomoha, Pacific Islanders are able to reclaim their authority through framework of discourses generated by the mythical heroes in Oceania. Patricia Grace blends the elements of the Maui myth with the life of Jesus Christ to constitute the experiences of Maori struggles to maintain their identity and land under pressures of modernization and acculturation in New Zealand (Keown 2007, 179). Similarly Witi Ihimaera explores the whale rider mythology with contemporary others in urban Maori societies (see Ihimaera 1987; Niki Caro 2003). I have discussed such themes elsewhere thus will avoid repeating such analysis here. However, I wish to look at certain aspects of the film Pear ta ma’on maf: The Land Has Eyes as an example of the cinematic use of the folktale motif (Hereniko 2004; See Allan Howard 2006, 74-96).

Retelling the story of Tafatemasian the mythical warrior woman goddess, Hereniko drives the narrative of Viki, the young Rotuman girl through the rite of passage, her growing up in a society fractured by age old sibling rivalry, the colonial history, and postmodern inroads in the lives of ordinary Rotumans rooted in the land of their ancestors. The Land Has Eyes is about the Rotumans or by extension other Pacific Islanders’ deep connection to land, which they claim through the telling of myths and folktales about their ancestors. Rotuma, as a storied place symbolizes the eyes of the ancestors, spirits, and the peoples of Rotuma. The evil deeds, the injustices, denials and the difficult times faced by people are all recorded through the eyes of the spirit of the warrior woman. The male brothers abandon the warrior woman on the island of Rotuma. In the absence of the male structures of authority and power, the warrior woman weaves her own world and gives birth to a community that responds through the feminine maternal schema. That is, Rotuma, is a creation within itself, and through that imagery, the soul and heart of every Rotuman is discovered. Not through lies, deceits, and betrayal, but through hard work, independent spirit, and socially productive relations cultivated with the land, the social relations, and the community.⁷ The Land Has Eyes “is significant for the many ways it attempts to make invisibles visible, to show the deceased, weather, sea, and land, can be conscious participants in everyday Rotuman life” (Houston 2008, 170).