Everything started out with the oral tradition it is a part of language that makes the most of responsible telling, careful listening, and memory.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock-and-roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the, for me, lazy, virtual studio with everybody-- Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, and Wendy Hagenmaier. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it.
Our show today is called "Re-indigenizing Through Storytelling."
The University of Colorado Colorado Springs or UCCS library, has recently hired a storytelling professor as part of an initiative to decolonize collections and promote Indigenous voices.
And that library is headed up by none other than our former colleague and former Lost in the Stacks guest Seth Porter.
Yeah and as he went back west, his credentials got bigger and bigger. It's Doctor Seth Porter now. He's a Dean. He's got a PhD. And he started a program on storytelling at UCCS by hiring Dr. Ilaheva Tua'one as their very first storytelling professor.
We'll hear from both of them about what bringing a focus on oral storytelling as a way to share information means in a world where the written word often rules.
And our songs today are about the tyranny of the written word, Indigenous people finding their identity, and I think some Polynesian heavy metal too.
Wow.
But we're going to start with a song about trying to cast off the trappings of modern forms of information. This is "Digital Nomad" by Digawolf who is himself an Indigenous Canadian. It's right here on Lost in the Stacks
[MUSIC - DIGAWOLF, "DIGITAL NOMAD"]
That was "Digital Nomad" by Digawolf. and this is Lost in the Stacks. Today's show is about storytelling in the academic library and decolonizing library collections. Let's meet our guest.
Seth Porter, Dean of the Library at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: I'm NS Ilaheva Tua'one. I'm an assistant professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies at the Women's and Ethnic Studies department. And I am the inaugural storytelling professor for Kraemer Family Library at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.
Can you give a short definition of what decolonizing the library or decolonizing collections means? SETH PORTER: Basically, it's kind of recentering different perspectives and narratives and forms of knowledge and creating frameworks where knowledge production is centered in our collection. It's celebrated in our collection. And it's preserved in our collection. And so one way we're doing that is making sure that the right people are here to do it. And they're funded.
And we're letting them create their vision. And what we're doing is making sure the frameworks from leadership and administration are there, so they can do that work. They can do it the way they see fit. And they can-- people like Ilaheva can create-- I mean, she's such an expert in this field. And she has such incredible lived experience as well as her domain expertise as a subject matter expert in this. She can create the vision she wants.
And we're going to help preserve this and celebrate it. And so I do just want to be very careful to make sure that this idea definitely doesn't belong to me. It's just important to me. And I care about it. And I think it's long past due in libraries.
Ilaheva, Seth mentioned your storytelling background. Was this position sort of created with you in mind? Or did you just kind of come to it after you saw it advertised? ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: It wasn't necessarily. I don't think it was created with me in mind. There was a call for any of the professors here. But when I saw it, I knew that it was for me, if that makes sense, because I do love storytelling. I have a rich storytelling past as well as storytelling culture that I come from.
And I have been involved in the storytelling around campus since I began here and also storytelling at my previous institution as well. So and I also incorporate storytelling into all of my teaching. I think it's a really fantastic way to help students remember the concepts. And so while it wasn't created for me, I knew that I would take it and make it my own and really make a great space for storytelling here at UCCS.
Can you expand a little bit on what you mentioned, the sort of storytelling history in your culture? ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: Sure. So well, first of all, my father is from the Kingdom of Tonga. And if you don't know where that is, I always explain it. It's roughly halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii, right? It's an archipelago of about 130 islands. And it is an oral storytelling culture. We love to tell stories.
Stories is how we pass information, really important information along to the next generation. And these stories are told for generations and generations. Stories about how to live, how to survive on an island, and many of these stories were told to me. And I keep telling them-- I tell them to my nieces and nephews so that they are kept alive in my culture too. And people who would memorize thousands of lines of poetry, that could last for days.
And often these stories were sacred stories that were told, say, only at the birth of a king so a rich storytelling culture. The Pacific Islands, in general, the Polynesian culture, Melanesian, and Micronesian, they're all rich storytelling because, well, they didn't have writing. They used knots often or different ways of tying sticks together to help memorize. They had their own ways of writing just not this kind of the writing that we're used to, this phonetic writing.
So storytelling is just a part of me. I like to make people laugh too. that's part of the culture, too, the trickster and just making people laugh. And so I love to tell stories that just make people laugh.
Is that part of the Tongan tradition as well? The story is not just tales for the birth of a king but also make your audience laugh. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: Yeah. Make it good, you know? [LAUGHING] ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: I was just seeing this that, in my family, we choose our words very carefully. We need to make a joke land. So we're also very careful about timing. There's no small talk in my family.
Like, if it isn't going to be enlightening or going to make everyone laugh in the family, then just keep it to yourself because you will just be ignored until the next excellent comment.
So how does the storytelling interact with your teaching? Because you are not a storytelling professor in your department, right? You have a completely-- not completely different but you have a full subject that you're teaching also, right? ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: Right. But because I'm in the Women's and Ethnic Studies program, we're very interdisciplinary. And we value all kinds of ways of knowing. And so in many of my classes, I'm having to explain, say, the existence of racism or colonialism.
And when I talk about racism, say, I'll tell a story about me biking around my block as a child. And because I come from an interracial background and I lived in a very diverse neighborhood, I was riding my bike around the block. And my first neighbor called us, my sisters and I, the n-word. And she happened to be white. And then as we were riding around the block, we had Mexican neighbors. And they called us an h-word that is a derogatory term for a white person.
And so as a child, this is very confusing to me. I don't understand the creation. Am I supposed to be a dark person? Or am I supposed to be a light person? Which of these insults am I supposed to carry with me, right? And it helps my students understand that, one, race is a social construct. It's constructed socially. This has no biological basis. And it's story like that. And that's what I mean about stories, telling them stories actual stories to understand these very difficult concepts.
We'll be back with more about storytelling in the academic library after a music set.
File this set under LB1042.C43.
[MUSIC - AILANI, "DENIED"]
You just heard "I Was Raised" by XIT. And we started with "Denied" by Ailani. Those are songs about Indigenous people discovering parts of their identity sung by Indigenous North American artists.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks. And we're speaking with Ilaheva Tua'one, the inaugural Kraemer Family Library Storytelling Professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. And Seth Porter, Dean of the Kraemer Library. CHARLIE BENNETT: So, Seth, I can draw a line between what she's talking about right now and the decolonization of the collection that you were talking about. But can you expand on that?
Can you talk about what you see or imagine actually happening in this process of these stories and then their effect on your collection and on the library as a whole?
Yeah. So I'll probably connect two dots here. Number one, we are starting to really expand the storytelling program. And Ilaheva, she's the center of it. So when I'm talking about it, it rotates around her, OK? I'm just here being her hype man whenever possible and funding everything else.
And so number one, we're actually hiring a digital archivist that's going to be focusing on creating exhibitions, digital and physical, with Ilaheva on storytelling and the storytelling initiatives that she is launching. So that's going to be a few things. And I'll let her talk about the story maps and a couple of her ideations downstream. But a big part of this is just creating the infrastructure.
So when she is doing this incredible programming, whether it's with local Indigenous tribes and their oral storytellers and creating this infrastructure and diffusing it into the community, we're also replicating that within our collections. And so there's two big things we're doing. One, hiring the digital curation librarian to launch all of these digital initiatives. And two, we will be raising money. And I'm also allocating funds to a collection that is focused on this type of work.
So it's from folks like Ilaheva and coming from these communities and on these ideas in generally. And so we have some plans that'll be rolling out in the next year that kind of center that even further. And I think we actually have a meeting about one of them today. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: Yeah. And so we're moving forward.
We're helping you craft the agenda right now.
There we go. There we go.
So when I was reading up on the program, one of the first things I thought was, oh, the voices of the students who are telling stories. You have a storytelling event. You record them. And then you have this sort of, not oral history, but you have this kind of spoken portrait of the campus. But I'm also hearing that you want to go outside the campus. You want to bring stories in that are about the ground that you're on. Can you talk about that a little bit?
ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: Sure. So first of all, UCCS has a really wonderful arts and humanities center called the Heller Center for Arts and Humanities. And they have a really beautiful adobe structure. And this is on the UCCS campus where scholars or people in the community can come and stay. And we provide a stipend. And we provide a space for them to teach. And so what we are envisioning is bringing in a local storyteller and provide them a space to just work.
And what this is and how this is different than the other kinds of people who use the Heller is that this person doesn't necessarily have to have, say, a PhD or a master's degree to be here. This person, their main focus is going to be storytelling. And so we want to put on an event like a fireside where we have an open fire. And the students can come and listen to this person just tell stories for a couple of hours.
We-- yes, this is also a really great opportunity for UCCS to get involved in the community in a way that's not just, say, researching the community or using the community as subjects or something, but really showing the community and the storytelling community that we value them. We value their work.
Since storytelling in your traditions, Ilaheva, a lot of traditions is strictly oral. Is there any consideration that some of the storytelling that gets done will intentionally not be preserved, that it's just to exist orally? ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: Yes, absolutely. I think that's one of the best things about oral cultures, OK, is that they exist in the moment. And there are many ways of telling stories as well. So while there is that initial telling of the story, there is the retelling of the story.
That's even better and can add in or detract, in many ways, more information, right? And what I think that we are trying to do and, not only decolonizing the kind of information that comes into the library, but also-- and this is the word that I love to use in tandem with decolonization-- is re-indigenizing the collections at the library.
So what I mean-- and so what I want to say is that we value that kind of oral knowledge that happens just in the moment and stays with you and grows into some other kind of knowledge. And because oral history is so devalued just for this, they say that if it only exists in this one moment, if it is not written down, then how can we know of its truth or efficacy or whatever you want to say? And what I reply to that is that writing itself can also be changed. Writing can be lost.
Writing can burn up in a fire or water. Or light can also damage writing. And just because you write something down does not make it true. The writing itself is not a truth-making process. And that's exactly what we are talking about when we say decolonize the library, re-indigenize the library, start valuing other ways of knowing orality.
Yeah. I just had a moment of professional vertigo thinking about that moment of a story that is told and remembered and retold that sort of takes on new information, drops out irrelevant information, matches the time, matches the moment, how completely against that the library is. It's not something I had thought about before. That was sort of antithetical to an oral tradition. I always thought it was just separate, just kind of running in parallel. Like, oh, yeah, we record it as things happen.
But I can see now that there's the kind of breakage of a process that was going on for a long time. And I might have to go lie down now that I've had that experience.
And from my perspective in leadership and administration, it's trying to break those structures and having the professionals who are thinking about this, doing the work, like Ilaheva, recreate the structures. And so that's what we're looking at, at least realigning the structures where needed and at some point breaking them all down and building them back up. MARLEE GIVENS: Well, we'll find out what other structures we need to break and rebuild on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC - LOU REED, "WALK ON THE WILDSIDE"]
Hi, I'm Morna Gerrard from Georgia State University's Special Collections and Archives. You're listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the one-and-only research library rock-and-roll radio show, which is fine. I'm an archivist. I don't make judgments. (SINGING) Holly came from Miami, FLA. Hitchhiked away across--
Our show today is called "Re-indigenizing Through Storytelling" about the new storytelling program at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Dr. Ilaheva Tua'one tells us how oral storytelling disseminates some knowledge and information that can't be shared any other way. She points out that there are knowledge and information gaps in the quote, "written word," unquote collections held in traditional libraries.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Ilaheva, eventually are you just going to burn the library down? Is that kind of the--
[LAUGHTER]
ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: That's the big joke is that I am just a nerd for libraries. I spent my summer at the Huntington. I've done a fellowship at the Chawton House Library in England. I absolutely-- I'm an archivist. I study the 18th century specifically to reimagine the stories that were being told in the 18th century that people now believe are just fact because these things were written down.
And so, you know, I even put up a protest when they moved my stacks in my old college down to the movable stacks, still breaks my heart. I still get upset about it when I think about the stacks that were moved down to the movable stacks. So I won't be burning down any libraries. I'm still heartbroken over the Alexandria fire. You know, so-- Yeah. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: While I don't want to burn this library down, I want to make new libraries.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
RIP Library of Alexandria. That's been coming up a lot recently. File this set under TP265.L874. [MUSIC PLAYING - Barbara Manning, "Haze is Free, Mounting a Broken Ladder"]
That was "Haze is Free, Mounting a Broken Ladder" by Barbara Manning. And we started out with "Burn Paper" by Treik Deeperheit, songs about using fire to overcome the tyranny of the written word.
This is Lost in the Stacks. And we're talking about storytelling in the academic library with Seth Porter, Dean of the UCCS Kraemer Family Library and Ilaheva Tua'one who is the first Storytelling Professor appointed at the Kraemer library.
I really liked the story that you told us from your own childhood that you share with your students. I was wondering if you have or if you're thinking about a similar story, personal story of using the library, encountering the library structures. The way that the library is organized is based on a long tradition of colonizers trying to organize the world and marginalizing other cultures.
And I would really love to hear how that feels to someone and if there's the potential of turning that into a useful story for the library community. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: I can think of two instances. You can't see them right here. You see that long stack of books right there? Mm-hmm. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: Those are the journals of Captain James Cook.
Oh, wow. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: I had to actually win a grant to buy those books because I needed them so much. The very first time that I encountered those books was in the Snell Library at Northeastern University in Boston. And I was able to check out all four. The books, when I got them, had never been opened. I knew this because I had to cut the pages when I opened the book. You know that?
Mm-hmm. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: [INAUDIBLE] cutting open that page, right? So, one, I knew that these were never studied. Secondly, when I opened that book-- well, I should say that, very narcissistically, I went to the index to find out when Captain Cook had first contacted Tonga where my father's from. So very narcissistically, I open the index. And it says go to page 356. So I go to page 356 or whatever. And I opened the page.
And on that page is my last name, Tua'one, the very first time that my last name was ever written down. So, one, this was a big, gigantic moment for me. Tangaloa, who is the Tongan creator god, was like Tangaloa shining his light down on me and saying that this is going to be your work. The second thing that I can think about-- so I mean, archives, to me, is very special.
The second thing that I can-- the moment that I'm thinking about specifically, I won a fellowship, I mentioned earlier, to Chawton House library in England. And that is a famous 18th-century and a women's library. Jane Austen's older brother, that's his house. And so I'd flown from Boston to this place across the pond. And in this library, I find a story of Ma'i. He's from Ra'iatea. And he's the very first Polynesian man to step foot in England. And I'd never heard this story before.
I've never come across Ma'i I found Ma'i in a library in England. And from that moment, Ma'i has become my central character. I'm going to write my first book on Ma'i. I had a dissertation chapter on Ma'i. And I don't know if I ever would have found Ma'i in the libraries that I had access to. And it was in this small library in England where I found Ma'i.
And so what I want to say is that without the kind of opening up of knowledge and valuing of different kinds of knowledges, people like me will continually be barred from access to this knowledge. When I mentioned Ma'i, Omai, to other Polynesians, to other Pacific Islanders, they're unlikely that they've ever heard of him either. And I like to say that Ma'i discovered England. That's my hook. Ma'i discovered England. Why not?
Why do we let one people be discoverers while other people are not discovering? Of course he's discovering England for the very first time. Of course he is, right? And so when I talk about Ma'i and the discovery of England and the Pacific Islanders who have never heard of Ma'i. It's because this story is not just not being told. And so there has to be an evaluation of whose stories we honor, whose stories we value. What gets into a library?
I think I talked about this with Dean Porter and also in the archival silences. And Dean Porter reminded me this. I totally forgot that my mom has her own archive. And it has family photos. And it has family recipes and it has family stories in her archive in her little cedar chest. But that is unlikely to end up in any archive. But why not? Why not? Why aren't we putting my mom's archive, why aren't we putting people's archives into archival libraries?
The resources that end up in archives show the value-- I mean show what values these libraries have. I was lucky enough, of course, to be in the Huntington Library this summer. And I got to see all of Jack-- they have Jack London's entire collection, his own personal library. So I was able to pick up his books and see his little marginalia and in his own handwriting. And I thought to myself, is my library going to end up in an archive one day? Who knows?
I keep everything just in case for the archive.
[LAUGHING]
But for the archive but I mean why not my mom's paperback romance collection? Her dog-eared-- you know? And that's what I'm saying. We have to reevaluate what we value in our archives. And this is the perfect way, bringing in other people's stories.
Dr. Ilaheva Tua'one and Dr. Seth Porter, both of the UCCS campus library. Thank you for joining us.
Thanks, y'all. ILAHEVA TUA'ONE: Thank you so much.
[MUSIC - HALEIWA, "HMS RESOLUTION"]
Well, after that segment, I think we need a dose of Polynesian heavy metal. File this set under ML3770.L5513.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You just heard "Kaito No Tetamanu" by Tikahiri. They are from Tahiti. And before that, "HMS Resolution" by Haleiwa. That's from Hawaii. Resolution was Cook's ship. There's a lot of history in this set. That was all heavy metal from the South Pacific.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Our show today was about storytelling. Do you have a memory of a storyteller or even being told a story that stays with you to this day?
OK, I can start. I attended a storytelling session from a person who told Appalachian folk stories. I don't remember her name. And I really don't remember any of the stories. But I do remember that she described people as not from the mountains as being from "off." As in, where is he from? He's from off. So I don't know why. But that's a piece of information that's always stuck with me. And I'm not sure that I would have found that out in the book.
I do have a story. This is a silly story. But you know that my dad went to Georgia Tech for one year before he transferred to Mercer. And he would tell a story. He told us more than once about going to a Georgia Tech football game. And there was a Cuban-American or just a Cuban student organization. And they had their own cheer that just went "Georgia Tech, Cha Cha Cha.
Georgia Tech, Cha Cha Cha." And so sometimes, when I see the word Georgia Tech, somewhere in my brain, it just goes "Cha Cha Cha."
[LAUGHTER]
Great. So this is maybe not storytelling I guess. Does oral history count? But what comes to mind for me is, at a diversity symposium a few years ago here at Georgia Tech, some of the first Black students to matriculate at Georgia Tech spoke on a panel. And it was just amazing to hear directly from them in their words about their experience. And it's really different from reading the records in the archives or reading the student newspaper or reading the official record.
So those voices are just so powerful and really, really add to your understanding. How about you, Charlie?
Oh, mine does not live up to the heft of anyone else's. But my favorite story that I ever tell is a story that I was inside myself and has a story inside it. It's far too much to try and recreate right now. But I'll just say, my friend borrowed a moped ridiculously. Off he went. He came back. And he had picked up a girl. It was a long time ago. And then he took her home. And while he was gone, we were all like, he picked up a girl pretty easily. I hope he doesn't lose a kidney.
And then he came back. And he stopped. And we're like, you came back. And he said, oh, my god. I almost lost a kidney. And then he told us the whole story of how he almost lost a kidney he thinks. And I get to tell that story sometimes. And it's my favorite story. OK, roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(SINGING) [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] MARLEE GIVENS: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe Marlee Givens, and Wendy Hagenmaier. Today's show was edited and assembled by Fred somewhere off.
Legal council and some acid-free boxes for preserving a collection of dog-eared paperback romance novels were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special Thanks to Seth and Ilaheva for being on the show. And Thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Find us online at lostinthestacks.org and subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix.
Next week, we'll borrow a moped. We may or may not lose the kidney.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm still really not sure why. We'll find out. Next week, we find out what happens when librarians stop doing one-shot instruction sessions and start getting real as in creating a minor.
Ooh.
It's time for our last song today. And to tie together all of the themes of the day, let's play--
Fred, wait. Wait.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
CHARLIE BENNETT: I have a request.
OK. I really got the perfect song to like--
I know that you work very hard every show to get just the right song. But really, all I want is some more South Pacific heavy metal. Can you just do that?
All right. Yeah, you got it, Charlie. For you. OK, so instead, let's see. This is a band of Indigenous New Zealanders called Alien Weaponry. And this track, it's a good one. It's called "Kai Tangata." Have a great weekend. Let's rock.
[MUSIC - ALIEN WEAPONRY, "KAI TANGATA"]
CHARLIE BENNETT: This sounds perfect. (YELLING) [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]