Transmitting Local Wisdom through Minahasan Folkore

Past inheritance is not always a relic to be preserved and kept in the museum to be watched and admired only. There are some that should be extracted to understand the values lie beneath and furthermore those extracted materials could be transmitted to be a guide and support in life. This writing is intended to extract the local wisdom that can be found in some of the folklores that circulated among the people particularly in Minahasa, as well as to figure out ways of transmitting it. This is a qualitative research where data are consisting of words rather than numbers. The primary data are the folklores specifically folksongs, folktales and proverbs that can be found in Minahasa, one for each category, and the secondary data are some information about Minahasan social and cultural life that can be taken from some books and internet websites. In analyzing the data, the theory of interpreting folklore introduced by Alan Dundes will be used. Having analyzed the object material, it is found that the local wisdoms carried by the folklores are valuable to give insight for people in Minahasa. Behind each example of folktale, folk proverb and folksong lies great moral lesson. Unfortunately, those have been almost forgotten by people in Minahasa. Therefore, one of the ways of reminding the Minahasans of their traditional inheritance could be by transmitting them through local subject in schools. By introducing the folklores to people since their early years, perhaps they will also learn to understand the local wisdom lies behind those folklores, and practiced them at daily basis.