I would like to share snippets of an interview that was published in March 1998 in “Telling Tales” (Australian storytelling magazine) and can be found on the following site: http://www.australianstorytelling.org.au/txt/mcleod.php. The interview is between Pauline McLeod, Aboriginal Storyteller and Helen McKay and is very insightful on Aboriginal storytelling traditions.
Helen: Every culture has a storyteller – how is the Aboriginal storyteller chosen?
Pauline: Traditionally, the storyteller was born into the role. There was also the opportunity for the storytellers to earn their position – learning and telling the stories – this was the traditional way stories were passed on. Everyone had stories, so it was part of the land, their totem, belief system, culture and the community they’d grown up with.
Helen: Who passes on the traditional Aboriginal stories?
Pauline: In NSW, where I grew up, the traditional stories were passed on to the children by the females in the community. Within our culture there’s a number of categories of stories: public stories, sacred stories, sacred secret stories, men’s and women’s stories. A woman cannot tell a man’s story to a group of men and men cannot tell women’s stories – I don’t know the men’s stories – I only know the female, the public, the women’s and sacred stories – stories just for women. Most of the creation stories of the dreamtime are in the general or public storytelling category and are traditionally told, sitting round a campfire. Each region in Australia has their own dreamtime stories of creation – how the animals came into being. I’d say in Australia there would be more than 700 stories about How the Kangaroo Got its Pouch.
Helen: What you are telling me convinces me that much research has to go in to Aboriginal stories before they should ever be told by tellers who don’t have a background of the Aboriginal culture.
Pauline: Yes. As I said previously – during the festivals, people shared their stories and those hearing them, would pick up a story they liked and take it home, adjusting it according to their region. And so, if the region was a swamp region, the creatures would become swamp creatures instead of creatures of the river region.
Helen: I get it. That’s how many of the stories have a similarity.
Pauline: Then you have stories which are shared, like the stories of the Darling River region, which covers the whole area from Queensland to Victoria. The Darling River has river stories, so, up and down the river there’d be twenty or more Aboriginal groups along that region and although they all spoke in different languages, they would have shared some of their stories because of the land links.
Helen: Now I see. It depends what lessons you want to have embedded in the story. Would you tell all versions of the story?
Pauline: Years ago, Aboriginal storytellers would only tell stories of their region. Because of the changes in the last 200 years in our country, especially in my culture, exceptions have been allowed, so a storyteller of one area – such as NSW – now tells stories of the swamp, the river, the desert, etc. That’s how we have changed.
I’ve always been interested in and loved stories. In effect I’ve been trained as a storyteller all my life. If a story just fitted it became quite popular in families. But the thought of becoming a storyteller never really came to me until I reached the age of 30 when the idea of taking on the role of a storyteller as a professional career choice called to me.
At this point, in 1992, I decided to become a storyteller full-on. Up until then I was learning my culture – learning how to entertain people, how to stand up in front of audiences, to shape my voices.
Helen: It was almost like an apprenticeship. What made the breakthrough for you?
Pauline: I was a removed person and when, in 1986, I met my natural family, I wanted to tell others, through drama, what had happened to me and that it wasn’t nice. But Australia wasn’t ready for it at that time. Poetry, talks and things like that were acceptable, but I was an impatient person – I wanted to make changes! We have to bring back the power, the honour and the role of the storyteller in society again. We have to teach ourselves what a storyteller is.
I believe storytelling is one of the most powerful forms of change within the modern world today. If a storyteller knows what they are doing, if they hold true to the tradition of the storyteller – whether it be Aboriginal, Anglo-Celtic, European or Black Forest storyteller, Hasidic, Asian or American storyteller – and understands the power of stories and how they can help people, they then have a credibility in the community.
Storytelling seems to have only become diminished because of the arrival of books and printing methods. The true role of the storyteller is to teach. The storyteller does recite – yes – but the true storyteller teaches the cultural values, passes on knowledge and the beliefs within the stories to the next generation.
To the international entertainers, I say – recognise yourselves as just that – entertainers – but don’t say you’re a cultural storyteller. In your telling of the Dreamtime stories, make sure you understand the background and philosophy behind them – so that when you tell these stories, you can explain all of the – say – twenty lessons for all age groups encapsulated within them. If you’re unwilling to do that research, it would be better to leave them to those who know and understand what they are doing.
