Cultural Tradition of Passing on Oral History – Voices of The Elders Conference – APH

I recently returned from the 2010 Association of Personal Historians Conference held in Victoria, British Columbia. The theme of this conference was “Voices of the Elders” and was named as such to “honor the First Nations, the first peoples of Canada, on whose traditional territory we met, as well as the elders of all nations, whose stories we help preserve.”

Mr. Elliott shared how, in each family, one person is chosen to continue the storytelling tradition. His culture is rich with symbolism and meaning and like any culture, particularly one which was on the recent verge of extinction, the oral traditions play a large part in community and family life. In his family, he was the chosen one. He explained to us that in his culture, when you reach an age where it’s felt that you are responsible enough to look after it, you are given your adult name. Your name could be something historical, about a story, or a place, but in order to prove you are responsible enough to have this name, you have to know the history and information about your name and be able to pass this information along to future generations. This begins the tradition of storytelling within each person.