Reclaiming Oral Knowledge: Indigenous Classical Musicians’ Decolonial Approaches

Since the nineteenth century, ethnographers and ethnomusicologists have collected Indigenous cultural materials across Turtle Island, archiving them in museums and government spaces. This paper supports the argument that archiving does not ‘preserve’ the music but prevents traditional and wholistic ways of living and learning by undervaluing oral knowledge. In turn, archival materials become static. However, due to the attempted erasure of Indigenous culture, these archival materials have become more valuable to Indigenous communities who seek to reclaim and decolonize them within the archives today. Through an analysis of the creative processes of Indigenous musicians Jeremy Dutcher and Cris Derksen this paper argues that these artists’ work decolonize and legitimize oral knowledge through their compositional processes. Dutcher and Derksen’s work challenge the preconceived thought that oral traditions cannot be a trusted source of knowledge that has been passed down by Indigenous communities from generation to generation.