Representations of human-nature relations in Gorontalo oral poetry: An ecocritical perspective

Abstract

Gorontalo oral poetry preserves ecological experience through culturally situated, communal, and intergenerational forms of expression. However, previous studies have primarily examined its linguistic structures, social functions, and cultural preservation, leaving its ecological philosophy and oral modes of transmission underexplored. This study explores four Gorontalo oral poems—Lo Huidu, Pa’ia Hungo Lo Poli, Bulalo Lo Limutu, and Ta Ilotuhata Lo Botu Bulota—using a qualitative descriptive approach and an ecocritical framework. Data obtained through audio recording, interviews, observation, transcription, and translation were analyzed thematically and interpretatively. The findings reveal a distinctive practical-relational ecological worldview organized around three interconnected principles. First, ecological continuity depends on everyday practices of restraint, care, cooperation, and collective restoration. Second, human–nature relationships are neither static nor inherently harmonious: nature sustains material and cultural life, but human conduct can also produce degradation, livelihood vulnerability, and environmental loss. Third, environmental experience becomes collective ecological memory through oral-literary features such as repetition, alternating voices, imperative expressions, narrative escalation, and communal address. These features transform planting, environmental degradation, and weather-related danger into memorable guidance that can be performed and transmitted across generations. The study advances ecocritical scholarship by identifying a culturally specific Gorontalo ecological worldview grounded in reciprocity, responsibility, vulnerability, and responsiveness to environmental change. It also contributes to oral-literature studies by demonstrating that oral poetry is not simply a repository of ecological messages but an active cultural process through which communities remember environmental change, evaluate human conduct, and transmit principles for sustaining ecological and cultural life.