Osmania University

Stories are an integral part of who we are as peoples. For aborigines and adivasis, traditional storytelling was mostly based on the spoken word. For generations, children learned about their culture and their history through stories their elders ure and their history through stories their elders told them. It was also used as a tool for entertainment. People of all ages gathered around a storyteller to hear funny stories — ancient tales that also served as important lessons. Aborigine and adivasi people also used other methods to record their stories, such as rock paintings, birch bark scrolls, and wampum belts and carvings, but the foundation was always the oral narrative. This has changed in the generations after contact with European settlers because Aboriginal people were forced to abandon their languages, and subsequently, their traditional stories. This had a huge impact on many aborigine and adivasi peoples, because instead of looking to their elders for learning, books became the way to learn. But books and how we learn from books is definitely different from how Aboriginal people used to learn — from their families, communities and people. Diversity in Aboriginal literature is an important common factor. When looking at the diversity in Aboriginal literature, no Indigenous person is alike, and therefore their experience is all different from each other. It is the difference between these individuals and how stories are told that gives an individual an understanding of the diversity of experience and perspectives in communities, historically, as impressively as today. Canadian Context: The Canadian aboriginal writings like the work of Lee Maracle, are groundbreaking. She is considered the grandmother of Aboriginal literature, especially after her groundbreaking works such as Bobby Lee: Indian Rebel and I Am Woman. I Am Woman is a pivotal piece of literature because it not only represents the story of Maracle’s personal struggle with womanhood, culture, traditional spiritual beliefs, and political sovereignty but it is also written during a time when that struggle was not over, or being spoken of. She has paved the way for many aboriginal writers when it comes to speaking of their truth. Maria Campbell is another trailblazer in the aboriginal literary field. She is a feminist, an activist, a visionary, an artist, a mother, a grandmother, and an elder who wrote the book Half Breed., which is a book that is not merely an autobiography. It is an important history — a counter-narrative to the “official histories of the Metis people in Canada, generally written by non-Metis people.” American Context: Native American literature, also called Indian literature or Ame ...view more