As all of our interviews have been graciously shared with our archive, we have a set of expectations for those who visit our archive to follow. Please read the following before interacting with any of the interviews so that you understand our intentions.
Guidelines for Listening and Interacting:
The oral history interviews in this collection are intimate conversations among people who have generously and bravely agreed to share these recordings with our archive. For many of the participants, it is the first time they may have talked openly about their life experiences. The memories they share are deeply personal, and sometimes painful and traumatic, yet they want their stories to be heard and used to help break cycles of silence. Please listen to the interviews in the same spirit with which they were shared. We ask that you, as a listener, reflect on the impact your engagement with them might have. Listening to these interviews provides the opportunity to recognize the power stories have to inform and inspire, and to learn about history from someone who experienced it firsthand.
- The audio recording should be considered the primary source for each interview. Transcripts have been lightly edited, solely for clarity and accessibility.
- The interviews contain background noise which have been left in to provide the listener a sense of the physical places where the conversations took place.
- To more fully understand interviews, we encourage you to educate yourself about the historical context in which the events of the interview are taking place. When and where was the interview conducted, and how might these factors influence the content of the interview?
- Listen carefully to both what is said and what is not said in the interview. Reflect on what might be missing and why.
Finally, we are accountable to our storytellers and the ways in which they envision sharing their stories. The content management system we are using, Mukurtu, has allowed for us to hold this commitment, built by indigenous communities to manage and share digital cultural heritage. If you are interested in creating a digital archive like this one, we highly recommend using this platform because of their ethical commitments around questions of privacy, accessibility, and honoring sacred knowledge.