Oral history is the act of interviewing individuals about historic events and activities that they witnessed or in which they were involved, in order to gain a more comprehensive – and personal – view of the past.
It is as critical as other sources such as newspapers, government documents, and personal papers researchers might consult when conducting a rigorous inquiry. Oral history offers something other sources lack – perspectives from often-marginalized groups and individuals, including many who have suffered human rights violations. These stories are often excluded from the historical record.
Why Oral History?
A History Built Around People
Oral historian Paul Thompson states that oral history is:
A history built around people. It thrusts life into history itself and widens its scope. It allows heroes not just from the leaders, but also from the unknown majority of the people. It encourages teachers and students to become fellow-workers. It brings history into, and out of, the community. It helps the less privileged […] towards dignity and self-confidence. It makes for contact – and hence understanding – between social classes, and between generations
A Way to Correct Incomplete Narratives
As the colonized have been ignored and misrepresented in traditional historical written sources, this has contributed to their exclusion and erasure within many museums. Oral history can help correct incomplete narratives and make room for the historically excluded to tell their own stories in these institutions.
Webinar Feature
Oral history relies on the collaborative relationship between researcher and narrator, with a co-created final product. Though the process is guided by the researcher, equally it is led by the narrator who chooses how to answer a question and which questions to refuse to answer. It involves narrators remembering, speaking, and listening, but outcomes are also determined by the way it takes place. The preparation for the interview, the time given to generating and cultivating relationships, and the transcriptions themselves are all part of oral histories.
Dr. Pauline Tennent, Manager of the Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba, provides an example of her grandmother taking part in an oral histories interview – revealing tensions in oral histories that are active today.