TOPIC: Oral history and the environment
Papers read:
“Drought, Endurance and ‘The Way Things Were’: The Lived Experience of Climate and Climate Change in the Mallee” by Deb Anderson
“Bringing a Hidden Pond to Public Attention: Increasing Impact through Digital Tools” by Anne Valk and Holly Ewald
Overall good, fun papers that everyone agreed with.
Oral history for legislation
Because the topic was environment, the oral history projects outlined in the papers were great examples of how oral history could feed into legislation. The paper by Anderson illustrated how the human experience of climate change makes the issue more tangible for people. Instead of the climate change just being stats and numbers. Valk and Ewald’s project re-engages people with nature but the sustainability and legacy of the project will show its true power.
The future is always better
The writers of the papers and the oral historians in the group seemed to suggest that it is often the case that people talk about the future in a positive sense. It is as if the nostalgia of the past gives people hope for a better future. Which in the case of climate change is remarkable but human’s are strangely optimistic.
Who don’t we interview
I keep finding cases where people wonder about why we do not interview certain people. Oral history is meant to “represent the voice of the people” yet there are still many voices left out. For example in Anderson’s paper she only interviews people who are still in the Mallee and not those who left the Mallee because of the trouble climate change was causes. Similarly I wondered during the reading group on #BLM why people hadn’t interviewed the people who would have been affected by the activism of those who had been interviewed.
It was brought up during the session that there is a lack of oral history projects based on our relationship with nature. We seem very obsessed and busy with industry but less so with nature. Both the papers have projects that are based in the countries where there were indigenous people before the europeans came. These indigenous must have had a relationship with the land before the people being interview and in some cases stories about the nature and land might have been passed down over generations. Why aren’t we recording those.
And finally America is doing something better than us…?
No, not messing up their democracy. But grass roots community oral history projects are more common in America than here. Let’s change that!