Class 11 English Lesson 13: Essay: Sharing Tradition by Frank LaPena

 

1 Essay: Sharing Tradition by Frank LaPena (page 256)

About the Essayist

Frank LaPena (1937-2019) was born in San Francisco, California. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Chico State in 1965 and a Master of Arts in Anthropology at Sacramento State in 1978.

He lectured widely on American Indian traditional and cultural issues, emphasizing California traditions. He also published several volumes of poetry and wrote a report on contemporary California art activities for News from Native California.

Gist of the Essay

In the essay Sharing Tradition, Native American writer and artist Frank LaPena emphasizes the importance of passing down cultural traditions, values, and stories from one generation to the next. He argues that oral tradition plays a vital role in preserving identity and wisdom, especially in Native American communities.

LaPena warns that if elders do not share their knowledge, or if the younger generation does not listen, valuable cultural heritage may be lost forever. He encourages open communication, mutual respect, and active participation in learning and teaching traditions to ensure that culture remains alive and meaningful in modern life.

Summary of the Essay

Sharing Tradition by Frank LaPena Frank LePena talks about the importance of oral tradition. If he keeps on telling all his readers about his experiences and thoughts related to oral this essay, tradition. According to him, the oral tradition refers to a form of art of human communication where knowledge, art, ideas, and cultural material are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from generation to generation. In other words, oral traditions are about passing on information related to cultures and values from generation to generation through oral means.

This transmission is made through speech or song, folktales, ballads, chants, prose, or verses, etc. Oral tradition helps to maintain the values of the culture. The task of sharing tradition isn't minor. The task of sharing tradition through oral means seems easy to talk and write, but quite hard to practise. Here, both the elders and young people play a very vital role in maintaining and preserving the values of the culture.

The role of speakers (elders) and listeners (young people or followers) is very important. The knowledge of close elders related to cultures, traditions, religions, and values must be listened to and followed properly by young people. The elders share the traditions and various concepts related to cultures and values with the young people. 

After the death of elderly people, young people have to fill their places and take responsibility. They have to take responsibility for sharing traditions after the elders through oral tradition to maintain cultures and values in their community. In this way, the oral tradition keeps on moving from generation to generation, preserving cultures and values. Young people can make elders alive by maintaining their concepts of tradition and knowledge of life in the community.

The concepts of elders move from generation to generation, being immortal. Tradition keeps on moving ahead properly if we are aware of our culture. The lifestyle of elders, their concepts related to life, belief, religion, culture, values, etc., enabled them to acquire the ideal position in their lives. They kept on sharing their tradition orally from generation to generation for the welfare of humanity. They showed the righteous paths to survive ahead. Their acts of sharing tradition were for the future of the coming generation and their life.

Oral tradition is the educational tool for understanding this natural world. It is the proper way to secure the cultures and values of the people. According to the writer, there are some problems with maintaining oral tradition from generation to generation. These problems are as follows:

a.     Difficulty in filling up the 'niche' of elders:

To maintain our culture, it is necessary to pass on the oral tradition from generation to generation. The young people have to listen and follow their elders and fill their ideal position (niche). But the task of filling the elders' places is very difficult. The young people and their interests in their culture seem weak because the elders' religious obligations as religions, ceremonies, dance, etc, are related to their culture. In modern times, young people don't prefer to listen to them and maintain culture and tradition. The niche of elders has become hard to fill. Due to this, a problem has been seen in passing oral tradition from generation to generation to maintain culture and values.

b.     Impacts of modern technology on people:

Every generation faces new and modern technology that replaces old things and concepts. The modern world and its people are moving on with drastic changes ahead, along with modern technology. In the name of development, various changes are being made in this natural world. Traditional things are replaced with new things. The change in climate and the natural world has been seen due to modern technology. People are seen as very busy with modern technology. Modern technology and its loneliness have separated them from each other. In this situation, it is difficult to maintain traditional and cultural values through oral means due to the lack of active listeners or followers.

c.      Modern Educational System and its impacts:

The modern educational system and the way of perceiving it divert people's minds. The knowledge in the present time is perceived through doing research and collecting data. The oral materials that researchers get in the field related to tradition may not be correct. The information related to oral tradition is even modified while printing. But, the information of oral tradition can be modified or even corrected through oral means. The educational process forces people to accept the information from the printed pages, which are full of errors and very difficult to correct. The published information related to cultures and values creates a kind of problem in passing on cultures and values from generation to generation through oral means.

d.     Source of information and way of perceiving and sharing it:

Oral tradition is fully dependent on oral means. It doesn't have any writing records as a literary tradition. The information provided by the speakers is sometimes transmitted mistakenly. Sometimes, the information is even perceived mistakenly by the listeners. Due to the gap between generations, the truth of the elders' historical information might turn into fantasy for the listeners. In this situation, it becomes quite difficult to validate oral tradition or traditional stories. There must be a proper understanding between the speakers and the listeners. The listeners must have a belief in what they are listening to. The way of perceiving and transmitting information must be made keeping trust in our traditions and elders.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S4pCQsm4XA&t=25s

Understanding the text

Answer the following questions.

a.      According to LaPena, what is the importance of oral tradition? To what extent do you agree with his opinions and why?

Frank Lapena, the writer of this essay, gives more importance to the oral tradition. According to him, the tradition followed by our elders must be passed from generation to generation orally. It helps to maintain our cultural resources.

Yes, I agree with his opinion because oral tradition helps the young generation to know about the lifestyle. The social, cultural environment of our elders in the past, moreover, they can know about their family history. Our culture is our identity; simply, oral tradition helps people to preserve their identity.

b.     Who preserves and passes on the oral tradition?

An oral tradition is a form of human communication in which knowledge, culture, traditions, ideas, etc., are transmitted orally from one generation to another. Every person must preserve and promote to pass on their tradition because they have experienced it.

c.      What is the danger of not passing on information from generation to generation?

If the information from one generation to the next is not passed, then there will be a loss of cultural environment, i.e., following festivals, religion, etc., our identity and values will be lost.

d.     What is the difference between oral tradition and literary tradition?

The difference between oral tradition and literary tradition is that in an oral tradition, information related to culture and values is transmitted from generation to generation through oral means, whereas in literary tradition, information is transmitted through written means.

e.      How does LaPena establish a relationship between art and oral tradition?

Both art and the oral tradition are forms of communication in which the author or storyteller tries to convey a message to the listener/reader. LaPena presents the oral tradition as the source of our art inspiration. He says that the oral tradition has an impact on how one visualizes the stories, the characters, the designs, and the colour for art. 

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