Page 309 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

Oral Tradition: Early Records
Oral tradition is the door to understanding a picture of the actual condition of the life
of traditional communities. In addition, oral traditions can serve as a bridge to getting
a complete picture of the networks of Southeast Asia’s population on one hand, and
their relations with the Pacific and Madagascar regions on the other. It is not easy to put
together a complete paper about local wisdom. In addition to difficulty of finding accurate
data about it, it is also difficult to get the ‘drive’ to travel back in time to the ruins of past
lives and write a record about them. Looking into the past to find local wisdom is not
easy either; local wisdom has varied contexts or backgrounds. The same local wisdom,
in addition to occupying the space and time at a certain time in the ‘past’ (considered as
‘traditional’), can also be found globally on the sidelines of day-to-day human activities.
So existentially, local wisdom has always been part of the people and inspired them in the
midst of multi-dimensional changes.
In relation to positioning the Melanesians in the discourse of Indonesia, oral tradition is,
in fact, a very important medium. It is from tales and stories, folklore, mythology, legend
and exposition ‘as is’ of local wisdom and oral traditions, ‘the thread of life’ is interwoven
and forms an integral understanding of the context of life and the history of the people in
the past. Therefore, it is necessary to first have a correct understanding of the function of
oral tradition in the course of history, which then can be studied more carefully to trace
back the life of the Melanesians.
On the sidelines of oral tradition, ‘local wisdom’ can be identified, which, in turn, can
open a window of understanding about human identity. People throughout the ages
have always expressed themselves, including oral tradition. The crystallization of local
wisdom mapped out in oral tradition creates a spark in people’s lives, which applies to
both the pattern of community life in the past, at present, and even in the future. Local
wisdom never exists in a vacuum, in the sense that local wisdom is always inherent in the
context of limited scope and real life. Conceptually, local wisdom, which here is called ‘oral
tradition’, is a spark of people’s life (read: Melanesia) to appreciate humanistic values of
life that can be found in the history of human life. The paradigm of communal life, also all
matters regarding personal life and even the various issues surrounding the environment
(ecology), are all beautifully crystallized in the language of oral traditions.
Vansina (1965) laid the foundation for understanding the nature of the oral tradition
that belongs to world citizens. In a sense, the oral tradition is a common phenomenon in
the dynamics of change and development of human personal life, which gives a special

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