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How We Remember: An Indigenous Oral History Archive

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Partially supported by a NULab Community Collaboration Grant.

“How We Remember,” is a digital Omeka-S archive project created by Claire Lavarreda and numerous co-creators from varied Indigenous communities. The project aims to uplift Indigenous voices regarding cultural preservation, heritage management, and social activism.

Participants include students, researchers, curators, archivists, and community historians across the globe. The project’s methodology is grounded in Indigenous Research Ontology, as outlined by Shawn Wilson in Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. The goal is to create a project that celebrates Indigenous “ways of knowing,” moving beyond the typical extraction-research dynamic employed by many academics. The project is focused mainly on collecting and transcribing oral histories with participants; however, the archive also has plans to digitize physical resources and provide links to participant websites/research.

The project’s primary goals are as follows: 1. Continue building the digital archive, 2. Interview participants who have already consented, 3. Transcribe these interviews, 4. Publish these interviews on the Omeka-S site, and 5. Share the project with communities, organizations, and schools interested in creating a partnership.

You can explore the digital archive project here or through the published YouTube channel.

Anyone interested in participating can do so by filling out the linked form.

Principal Investigator

Claire Lavarreda, Graduate Student, History

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