For my reflection, I decided to listen to CBCIndigenous’ Unreserved podcast. Listening to the episode titled, “Springtime Traditions and Teachings from the Land”, one can tell they’ve taken great care to integrate traditional Indigenous storytelling practices by grounding the stories in place, season, and kinship. The teachings about birds returning, the importance of maple sap and many others all come from lived experiences which have been passed down through oral tradition. This podcast instantly reminded me of home and the series of stories I grew up listening to like ‘The Spear and The Bead’ or the ‘Legend of Kintu’. They weren’t just stories told for the sake of passing time, they were lessons. Lessons about ancestry, land, responsibility, as well as the consequences of pride or disobedience. And just like us, Indigenous Elders in Canada use storytelling in a similar way, as a way to teach, preserve and reclaim. The podcast demonstrates concepts of digital sovereignty and decolonization that Tekobbe (2024) describes the Indigenous people are centered as the knowledge holders. The Elders are the ones who guide the narrative, their voices are being amplified, not silenced like before. This centering of Indigenous voices without filtering them through institutions is a decolonial act in itself as the narrative power of the Indigenous Peoples is being reclaimed on their terms.
Willox et al. (2012) describe digital storytelling as a tool that blends memory, voice, and land based knowledge into something lasting. As someone raised in an oral culture, I had to wonder whether if our sacred stories were digitized, would they hold the same power without the context, ceremony, or voice that originally carried them? The podcast format manages to do this as it allows for tone, voice and context to remain intact without it feeling like an extract nor flattening the teachings’ meanings. Having teachings being uploaded to coincide with the different seasons and ceremonies associated with them allow for the culture to hold the same power. This digital medium helps to preserve and expand these stories by giving them a platform that reaches wider audiences like me while keeping the original voice intact. However, Wakefield (2024) explains that ephemeral digital content can be intimate but fleeting which raises questions about long term preservation. Stories like ours that center around origin, exile and morality aren’t ones we can toss up for 24 hours. They’re meant to be carried, retold, and reflected on for a lifetime. Tekobbe (2024) reinforces this when she says that Indigenous storytelling isn’t about fixed truths but ‘layered knowings’ rooted in kinship, responsibility, and cultural memory. These stories are more than just stories, they are our ways of being and while one can digitize them in order to preserve them, that very same preservation can become performance, told due to trending topics. Additionally, in Uganda, some stories are only told at specific times, by specific people, and never written down. When sacred stories enter permanent digital spaces, it can be potentially risky. I believe that the same can be applied to this podcast. Barnea at al. (2023) argue that people engage more deeply with fleeting content as there’s a risk of missing something. I truly resonate with this argument. I’ve sat through stories at home with full attention as I knew there would be a long stretch of time before I heard them again. Converting those stories to podcast segments would make them feel different, disposable. It makes me wonder whether making something ephemeral in the digital world doesn’t protect it but instead makes it disposable. In Uganda, stories don’t just live in words but in pauses, tone, who tells them, when and where. I believe the same would be true for the Indigenous Peoples. The podcast has allowed for life to be breathed into these stories. It aids in preserving media and allowing more people access to consume it. I believe the strength of this format of digital media storytelling lies in its ability to balance modern media to protect tradition all without erasing it.
References:
Barnea, Uri, Robert J. Meyer, and Gideon Nave. “The Effects of Content Ephemerality on Information Processing.” Journal of Marketing Research, vol. 60, no. 4, Aug. 2023, pp. 750-766. https://doi-org.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/10.1177/00222437221131047 .
Cunsolo Willox, Ashlee, et al. “Storytelling in a Digital Age: Digital Storytelling as an Emerging Narrative Method for Preserving and Promoting Indigenous Oral Wisdom.” Qualitative Research, vol. 13, no. 2, 2013, pp. 127-147. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112446105.
“Springtime Traditions and Teachings from the Land.” Storykeepers, hosted by Falen Johnson, CBC Podcasts, 27 Mar. 2024. Apple Podcasts, https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/springtime-traditions-and-teachings-from-the-land/id1030476712?i=1000701193602 . Accessed 6 Apr. 2025.
Tekobbe, Cindy. “Indigenous Storytelling and Ways of Thinking and Being.” Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces, edited by Marie Battiste, University of Regina Press, 2024, pp. 33-51.
Wakefield, Lane. “Conceptualizing Ephemerality in Online Marketing Communication for Consumers and Firms.” European Journal of Marketing, vol. 58, no. 6, 2024, pp. 1437-1462. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ejm-05-2022-0366/full/html.
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