Oral Traditions of Indigenous Peoples

Wired published a news item today regarding the Maasai People, their music, culture, and oral traditions. You would not necessarily expect to read stories about indigenous peoples - or any peoples, for that matter - on a Tech site, but in the case of the Maasai, the UN has been enlisted to help preserve stories, songs and even dances into copyrighted materials and place them on iTunes for purchase, thus generating an income for the Maasai. Other indigenous peoples around the world have shown interest in preserving their own cultural traditions in this manner and the Maasai for their part have been trained to catalog digital files and maintain archives, as well as conduct interviews of their elders. This is good news, both in terms of world history and in terms family history. This may help many genealogists whose ancestors can be found within the indigenous peoples of the world.