ORal TESTIMONY PROGRAM
“For many Indigenous communities, oral history is inextricably connected to identity. It is a collective enterprise essential to cultural survival, naming the world, asserting power and belonging, and narrating relationships across time and space to land, sea, sky and each other.”
– Mahuika, N (2019). Rethinking Oral History and Tradition; An Indigenous Perspective. Oxford University Press
Oral tradition has been the primary means of cultural transmission for Indigenous peoples in Canada and throughout the world. Traditional stories and songs are a part of many people’s understanding of themselves, their culture, and the world and can present a richer and more holistic understanding of many subjects as they relate to history, residential schools, and traditions.
Indigenous scholars are making the push in academia for increased inclusion of oral history and testimony. Great progress has been made in recent years by Indigenous community use of oral history as evidence, especially relating to traditional rights and land rights. Courts have moved toward accepting oral histories as viable sources for understanding and interpreting the past, but this remains a process that has not been fully completed yet.
The Oral Testimony Program at the IRSHDC
The Centre recognizes the continuity of Indigenous traditions involved with orality, oral history, and oral testimony and recording oral histories and testimony are central to its Survivor-centered work. As part of this ongoing initiative, the Centre will enter into agreements with individuals and communities to record, store, translate, and transmit oral stories and statements in accordance with Indigenous community laws and customs. We are committed to a mindful, respectful, and trauma-informed approach to recording and sharing oral knowledge in all forms, including storytelling, song, ceremony, and others. The Centre will both participate and support in the recording of oral histories, archiving the recordings on-site for long-term preservation, and will look towards Indigenous ways of knowing around ownership, access, privacy, storage, and presentation of testimony.
The Centre gathers oral histories using four main methods:
Projects
Testimonies are gathered as part of specific projects or initiatives. For example, new interviews and testimonies will be collected as part of a partnership with Splatsin and UBCIC in the 2020-2021 Indian Child Caravan anniversary project and the 2020-2023 Virtual Museum of Canada project. The Centre has recently launched the Oral Testimony Project in partnership with the community of Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc to collect the testimonies of Survivors who feel called to share their stories following the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools across the country.
In-House recordings
The Centre responds directly to requests from Survivors, communities and organizations representing Survivors. This stream of recordings can include gathering stories outside the time constraints of a project, with health and cultural support provided by the Centre. Testimonies can also be recorded with the end goal of incorporating them into the Centre’s records and collections.
Partnerships
The Centre will leverage pre-existing and new partnerships to obtain access and hosting rights to other currently established and operating community and organizational oral history collections. Examples of current partnerships include the Legacy of Hope Foundation, which has provided video testimonies for the Centre’s records and collections.
Donations
Donations of oral testimonies and recordings could come from university faculty, private collections, community collection or other types of individual donations, in a wide variety of formats. The Centre reserves the right to reject donations where there is inadequate documentation or the rights and permissions are not clear.
The Centre will also proactively look for partnerships and agreements with Survivors and organizations, for any areas that fall within or are directly related to the mandate of the IRSHDC. This includes testimonies and histories related to the on-going impact of residential schools and colonialism in Canada, day schools, Indian hospitals, the child welfare system, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the Sixties Scoop and related histories.
Who will do the recording of these histories?
The Centre will both participate and help in the recording of oral histories and work to archive and store the recordings on-site for long-term preservation. Some recordings will be directly affiliated with projects and exhibitions and will have their own specific descriptions.
Does the Centre “own” the oral histories captured?
Terms of Agreements that are related to ownership, access, privacy, stewardship, identity and copyright over oral histories, stories or statements will be considered carefully in order to respect terms provided by Survivors, intergenerational Survivors and all other partners.
Ethical use of stories/testimonies will involve (1) the gathering of knowledge, (2) the content of the knowledge(s) or stories transmitted, and (3) the mode/method of transmission. In respect for Survivors who have an inherent relationship with storytelling or statement-gathering and the multiple testimony experiences (ie. Alternative Dispute Resolution – ADR, Common Experience Payment – CEP, Independent Assessment Process – IAP, Truth and Reconciliation Commission -TRC) oral histories will not be acquired lightly or without recognition of trauma related to statement-gathering.
How will the Centre be held accountable to Survivor and Community members?
Through this program the Centre remains accountable first and foremost to those individuals, Survivors and communities that it interacts with and whose oral teachings and testimonies form the core of the program. The Centre respects all individual, community and organizational consent stipulations around collection, storage and access to individual and group testimonies.
The IRSHDC will strive to create agreements directly with individuals and/or communities in order to record, store, translate and/or transmit orally recorded stories or statements in accordance with existing community laws, legislation or customs.
What types of knowledge transmission will be accepted in the program?
The IRSHDC also works to provide space for multiple versions of oral transmission of knowledge including (but not limited to); testimony, statement, storytelling, song, ceremony and/or oral history. Agreements will include terms of consent, access, ownership and reciprocity. Agreements will be made with individuals and communities on a case-by-case basis.
What are the guiding principles for this work?
The Centre is guided in its work by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, and to represent all Indigenous Peoples of Canada – First Nations, Métis and Inuit. The Centre also follows Indigenous-specific guidelines and policies related specifically to protection and control of information, including the First Nation principles of Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP) as expressed by the First Nations Information and Governance Centre (FNIGC) and to the Inuit specific guidelines around research data contained within Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami’s (ITK’s) National Inuit Strategy on Research.