Mo’olelo • (mo-o-le-lo) • noun
Definition: story, myth, legend, history
Origin: Hawaiian
Mo’olelo has a meaning that can be easily lost in translation.
At face value, it can mean either story, myth, legend, or history; and it is easy to see how collectively some of those definitions could be in conflict. How can history also be a myth or legend? According to a Eurocentric outlook, history is primarily considered to be a written record of events from the past, while myths are fictional tales that may or may not serve as a morality tale. Through a European lens, this word would seem contradictory, but the fact that mo’olelo is not a contradiction tells you everything you need to know.
Preserving Oral Storytelling
Mo’olelo derives from two Hawaiian words, “mo’o” and “olelo.” Mo’o means “succession” and olelo means “speaking” or “speech.” When I first learned about mo’olelo, I thought the “succession of speech” meant the succession of words that are necessary to create a story, myth, legend, history, etc., but that is not what mo’olelo means at all. The “succession of speech” refers to the transfer of stories and language from one person to another. It means the oral tradition of the Hawaiian people, and now it becomes more clear how myth and history can be encompassed into one word.
In the modern age with the internet, television, an abundance of books, and a global literacy rate close to 90 percent, it can be hard to imagine how integral oral storytelling has been to human life for thousands of years. Communities have long relied on storytellers to keep their history alive. The history of a people was more than just the documented facts from the past. Their history also included the legends of their heroic ancestors, mythologies about the origin of their community, and fables for maturing people through life and keeping the community together. Storytelling represented the backbone of a society, and it is unfortunate that this sacred tradition seems to be fading away in the westernized world.
At first, I wanted to blame the devaluing of storytelling and mo’olelo to an increased reliance on the written word, but now I do not think that is actually the case. Instead, the decline of oral storytelling in America derives from ethnocidal division and the systemic erasure of truth in our society.
The role of the storyteller has always been the holder of truth and wisdom for a people. The storyteller had a cultural and communal obligation to not sully or corrupt the stories and these stories could not be purchased. There was no desire to sacrifice the truth or to tailor one’s stories to a particular audience. These stories were sacred, and not created for the purpose of consumption or to generate profit. These stories cultivated the spirit of a community, and in order to keep the community alive and vibrant the spirit of the stories needed to stay uncorrupted and passed down from generation to generation.
Ethnocide vs. Speaking Truth
Ethnocide, however, consists of destroying the culture, or geist, of a people. Therefore, the oral traditions of the oppressed will be constantly under attack from the ethnocidal oppressors, and the oral and written traditions and history of the oppressors will depict their acts of oppression as either banal or benevolent. The articulated history of an ethnocidal society elevates falsehood and destroys truth. In so doing, the society no longer has a role for the storyteller and has replaced them with the propagandist. Considering that yesterday was the Fourth of July, I believe that it is especially important to examine this grim American reality.
The tension that is consuming America in many ways consists of deciding the story of America that we choose to continue to tell. For the majority of American history, the stories that America has told have been ones of erasing the oppressed. The experiences of Black Americans were glossed over and whitewashed. The genocide that colonizers inflicted upon indigenous people has been largely ignored. The theft of indigenous land has been a story that has rarely been told. Only recently have Americans learned that Mt. Rushmore was carved into the face of the sacred ground of the Lakota people and that the monument was created by Gutzon Borglum, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. America has told countless stories about the alleged benevolence of our Founding Fathers, and ignored the fact that most of them were slave owners. America has worked to make the atrocities of ethnocide and genocide appear banal so that America could tell falsehoods disguised as truth.
American stories often conceal the truth, and these ethnocidal narratives cannot coexist alongside the oral traditions of communities of color. If indigenous people in America tell the stories of their ancestors, they will detail the horrors of colonization. If Black people do the same, they will articulate the atrocity of the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. Asian Americans will describe the internment camps of World War II and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Oral traditions and the voice of the ancestors will dismantle the propagated American narrative.
America does not have a word like mo’olelo that celebrates your ancestors and the cultural necessity of generational truth, and this should highlight the linguistic, philosophical, intellectual, and cultural destruction that ethnocide can wage upon a people.
This week, I would like for you to meditate on the importance of speaking generational truths, and the necessity of holding and keeping truths alive so that you can pass them on to the next generation. You can write them out in a journal and begin to ask your family or chosen family members about the stories you have never heard. This simple but profound act can be monumental because it has sustained cultures for thousands of years, and can still do so today.
Please share your thoughts with us via email, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter using #TheWord, and support us on Patreon. We will be hosting a Live Q&A session on our Instagram today at 5PM ET so that we can answer your questions about mo'olelo. We hope to see you there.
Events
On Wednesday, July 8 at 7pm ET, we are hosting the second installment of SAMASAMAxSCL July Art Series: Diaspora People's Month. We have three new artists for you to enjoy. You can RSVP for the event here.
On Friday, July 10 at 1pm ET, Barrett Holmes Pitner will be a panelist at the American Bar Association’s event "Beyond Redlining: Black Lives Matter and Community Development, Part 2" where he will talk about the impact of ethnocide on American society. You can register for the event here.