Preserving Resilience Through Oral Histories: A Snapshot of NEH’s Cultural and Community Resilience Program
In times of global transformation and crisis, such as those brought on by climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, the stories of those who lived through these events become essential records of human experience. Oral histories provide an avenue to record these stories, enabling communities to preserve their cultural memory in their own voices and contribute to the broader humanities record by offering essential primary sources and new, often under-recorded, perspectives for understanding history and culture. The Cultural and Community Resilience (CCR) program supports projects that use oral histories to document and safeguard the narratives of disadvantaged communities. This blog post highlights a handful of CCR-funded projects that are working to preserve the memories of communities across the nation, ensuring their stories continue to inspire cultural and community resilience.
Oral histories emphasize personal narratives and lived experiences. Unlike traditional historical records, which often comprise official accounts and written documents, oral histories amplify the voices of individuals, particularly those from disadvantaged communities, who may have not been represented in the historical record. Building on storytelling traditions passed down through generations, oral histories continue to preserve cultural wisdom. The projects supported by the CCR program honor these cultural traditions in both their outcomes and processes. By doing so, they contribute to a more inclusive humanities record, enriching our collective understanding of history through the many voices of those who lived it. The following projects embody the principles of cultural and community resilience by directly engaging with communities, training a new generation of oral historians, and respecting the voices of the narrators.
An Intergenerational Knowledge-Sharing Oral History Project in Taos, New Mexico
In Taos, New Mexico, the Intergenerational Knowledge-Sharing Oral History Project is bringing together youth and elders from Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo communities to record oral history interviews to understand how climate change and technology have shaped the lives of local elders. The region is faced with heightening climate change impacts at 7,200 feet of elevation, such as less water and compressed seasons. Narratives within this project will discuss the effects of climate change on daily life in Taos, including changes in food production, family dynamics, education, and employment. Students aged 14 to 20 learn to document the rich cultural heritage and resilience of their region by interviewing community elders. Project Director Sandy Campbell speaks to how oral histories as a research method have a unique access to memory. “A lot of the things we want them to learn are not available in any textbook, any website, or on Instagram; they are only in the memories and words and feelings of our elders. We want to approximate a grandmother or great-grandmother passing on some of her wisdom, stories, and reflections to her children and the coming generations. Ideally, by doing so, we will empower this current generation of kids to know a lot more about this place and how it is an enormously resilient community.”
1960s Oral Histories—New York Community Connectors
This project focuses on preserving the under-recorded experiences of New Yorkers who attended and participated in counter-cultural activities during the 1960s. 1960s Oral Histories—New York Community Connectors will house long-form videotaped oral histories on culture-changing events and their long-term effects through the voices of BIPOC and LGTBQ+ individuals. As the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and health infrastructure challenges intensify, sharing these voices and lessons becomes increasingly crucial. Julia Fell, Oral History Initiative Lead & Internship Supervisor on the project, notes the connections built through oral histories. “As the interviewer, I have the opportunity to make countless connections with storytellers and learn from them firsthand. And thanks to the funding we have received from NEH, I have been able to travel to new locations where we set up neutral, safe spaces for our process to unfold. It is an honor and a privilege to be welcomed by communities, both geographic and those built upon shared experiences, and to be able to give voice to real people.”
A River of Memories: Preserving Lived Experience in the Borderlands of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas
A River of Memories: Preserving Lived Experiences in Borderlands of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas focuses on creating a digital archive that displays the cultural experiences of residents in the Rio Grande Valley, a region that straddles the United States-Mexico border. The project is born out of the need to retrace the borderland’s history in the face of economic, environmental, and generational challenges. Through a combination of long-form oral history interviews, home movies, and photographs from each of the four counties in the region, this project preserves the stories of a community shaped by its complex environmental landscape. To achieve this, community members participate in free archival and preservation workshops, where they learn oral history methodologies. As a result, they are equipped with the knowledge and tools needed to actively engage in the project as narrators, historians, archivists, and donors. Project Manager C. Díaz notes the power of oral histories in this project: “We choose to use oral history as a methodology as it allows for individuals who may not have had access to resources such as cameras and film to document their lives but have memories that center these forgotten aspects of our region. We believe these first-person accounts, particularly voices that have been left out of history, are crucial windows into understanding our collective culture. These stories have the ability to act as a healing salve, provide people with the tools they need to reclaim their agency and celebrate their unique heritage, and can result in a much overdue borderland narrative shift.”
Community Archival Resilience and Engagement (CARE): Voices of Asian American Elders in the San Francisco Bay Area
The Community Archival Resilience and Engagement (CARE) project explores the stories of Asian American elders in the San Francisco Bay Area during the COVID-19 pandemic. Community members are trained to conduct photovoice oral histories of elders in the Filipino/a/x, Lao, Iu Mien, and Thai communities. This intergenerational project documents the resilience of these elders, who have faced both the challenges of the pandemic and the rise in anti-Asian hate incidents. Elders attend a workshop on preserving their memories using specialized kits. These kits include gloves, acid-free document storage boxes, and other materials that facilitate professional preservation techniques. Additionally, participants have the option to digitize their memories, allowing them to start their own files within the University of California Berkeley Ethnic Studies archives. Project director Loan Dao speaks to how the project’s methodology draws from cultural storytelling traditions that emphasize the collective memory and shared experiences of communities: “For many AANHPI communities, the transference of knowledge across generations happens through storytelling. Stories are often shared as ways to create or maintain collective histories and to impart lessons from experiences of elders. Oral histories become critical sites of understanding histories ‘from the ground up’ by recording what is important to a community from [its] perspective.”
Collective Care: Oral Histories of Climate Change in Puerto Rico
Collective Care: Oral Histories of Climate Change in Puerto Rico, led by Rosa Ficek, documents the lived experiences of Puerto Ricans who have endured the compounded effects of climate change and colonialism. This project records oral histories in collaboration with three community-based organizations, amplifying the voices of residents as they navigated the catastrophic impact of hurricanes Irma and María and the 2020 earthquakes. Residents actively shape the project’s narrative through this community-driven approach. Here, oral histories function as a tool to highlight the resilience and solidarity of communities that are historically marginalized. By focusing on the intersection of climate change and colonialism, the project offers valuable lessons for both local and global contexts.
Stories of Language, Communication, and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kansas Latinx Communities
Stories of Language, Communication, and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kansas Latinx Communities shares the experiences of Spanish-speaking and Indigenous language-speaking communities in Kansas during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project records in-depth oral history interviews that detail the pandemic’s impact on these communities. Researchers record these narratives and create educational materials and workshops to continue this process of knowledge transfer with the broader community. Project Director, Rachel Showstack at Wichita State University, speaks to how this project sits at the intersection of language, health equity, and cultural resilience: “Our hope is that these stories will support the provision of equitable language access and information dissemination in future public health emergencies.”
A People’s Oral History of Coal
A People’s Oral History of Coal, led by Kerri Clement, explores the tangled challenges of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the shifting landscape of the coal industry through the voices of Apsáalooke (Crow) elders. This project records oral histories from individuals in coal-dependent communities, documenting their lived experiences and perspectives on the economic, social, and environmental challenges they have faced. By focusing on these narratives, the project sheds light on how communities that have historically relied on coal are navigating the joint crises of a global pandemic and the transition away from fossil fuels. By showcasing the voices of those directly impacted by these changes and uncertain futures, the project ensures that their stories contribute to a broader humanities understanding of how traditional industries and the communities built around them are coping with and responding to global shifts.
Records of Resilience: Stories from Public Housing
Records of Resilience: Stories from Public Housing, preserves the lived experiences of public housing residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Records of Resilience illuminates the strategies these communities employed to navigate a public health crisis that disproportionately impacted marginalized groups. Oral histories are well positioned to record the complex, personal, and often overlooked experiences of public housing residents. Project director, Liú Chen, comments that “oral history as a methodology is heralded by many as a way to ‘democratize’ history and broaden the perspectives represented in the historical record. We strive to do this with public housing communities: giving them voice, representation, and agency over the way that their histories are documented. Residents are a part of every component of our oral history programs—they are not only the narrators, but also the interviewers, the transcriptionists, the archivists, the policy writers, and more… Public housing residents have much to teach the rest of the country when it comes to resilience through adversity, and we are excited to be documenting that for the general public.”
These projects showcase the diverse ways oral histories can be conducted, shared, and preserved, while highlighting the wide range of communities, histories, and memories they can impact. Some of these projects focus on digging deep by assembling a few long-form interviews, while others cast a wider net by documenting many short-form recordings. Many of these projects engage with intergenerational methods. Some projects nod to oral histories as a traditional method of preserving memory in their cultures, while others introduce oral histories as a new, more sustainable and personal way to document community experiences. These documented stories will either be made available online or kept within the impacted community. This commitment to accessibility ensures that these oral histories remain openly and reliably available, serving as a testament to resilience and adaptability of communities facing global challenges. By centering these projects around their respective communities, they foster collaborative partnerships and develop strategies for stewardship, preservation, and dissemination that align with community needs. Regardless of the specific implementation of oral history, storytelling as a form of cultural and community resilience has been an ever-present thread within humanity, and CCR works to support this enduring tradition.
Learn more about what goes into making an oral history from the Oral History Association here: https://oralhistory.org/best-practices/
You can also view some of these project proposals in full on the CCR homepage: https://www.neh.gov/program/cultural-and-community-resilience