Oral Tradition Volume 13, Number 1March 1998
Editor's Column
During the summer of 1992 we sent out a call to scholars to submit work for a special issue of this journal. Our letter of invitation suggested some assumptions we brought to this project. We wrote:
We are interested in publishing a group of essays that share several features: 1) presentation of Native American text(s) with commentary, 2) joint authorship that represents collaborative research on the text(s), and 3) reflections on the way collaborative research worked (or did not) in this instance. In more general terms, we would like to publish essays that explore dimensions of perspective, discovery, and meaning which emerge when Native and non-Natives work together on Native oral texts. The scholarship we wish to publish will not be based merely on “cooperation” between working scholars and “friendly” Natives, nor, we hope, will it repeat that all-too-familiar division of labor: “you perform—we interpret.” Rather, the work we seek will question such commonplace oppositions as “scholar” and “Native,” “investigator” and “informant.” It will take up issues associated with the positions of insider and outsider—in the academic context, in Native American community settings, and perhaps even in some situations where the two overlap. We assume that when Natives and non- Natives share equally the analytic process, the possibilities for generating insight, promoting awareness of depth and complexity, and encouraging sensitivity to cultural issues increase dramatically. Moreover, we assume that collaborative work of this kind has the capacity to yield more and better information and more practically applicable knowledge from a given text—with reduced chances for ethical blunders. At the same time, we are acutely aware that the verb “collaborate” has a special resonance in the context of any Native American community which the second meaning in the following entry captures well: “1. to work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort; 2. to cooperate treasonably, as with an enemy occupying one’s country” (The American Heritage Dictionary).
Critiques of past practice are of course needed and welcome. However, our intention with this project is to try to point a way for future work, to promote kinds of scholarship that will help to create a common ground of good faith and understanding from which mutual respect can grow among all of us. We wouldn’t mind having a little fun along the way; essays on humor are welcome!
We quote from this letter at length to make visible our plans and assumptions. We have been able to follow these plans fairly closely and in large measure our assumptions have been borne out. However, as the correspondence grew and work came in, we encountered the unexpected. We did not foresee that some topics proposed by our colleagues would become problematic. Toelken and a Navajo colleague came to a point in collaborative discussion of their text where they felt they could not continue, so they dropped the project. The Dauenhauers, paragons of patient long-term collaboration, could not resolve the issue of who owned the text they originally wanted to discuss; when they changed to another story, a death in the family prevented further work, for the story was closely related to the clan of the deceased man; their final option brought to light the unexpected account of a Russian folktale being told as a Tlingit story. We did not know we would find out about Tohono O’odham “female breathy speech.” We could not have anticipated the excitement of a young Indian scholar working with an elderly anthropologist to bring her fragile field notes back to life for the benefit and renewed use of his tribe; nor did we suspect—in a work on translation—that one of our essays would deal with a story told by Native people in English. In addition, neither of us anticipated that life’s dosage of operations, trips abroad, sabbaticals, and family obligations would extend the project for several years beyond its planned completion date.
Read more about Collaboration in the Translation and Interpretation of Native American Oral Traditions
Larry Evers and Barre Toelken, Special Editors
