01 • Welcome!
19m 24s
An overview of Self Evident's oral history training and archiving program and how to use it.
LESSON OUTLINE
1. Who we are
2. Why are we doing this?
3. Our oral history program
4. How to use this toolkit & digital archive
a. Participate as a Contributor
b. Participate as an Educator
c. Helpful tips for using our oral history program
5. Grow this program with us!
LESSON REFERENCES
TRANSCRIPT
Lesson 01: Welcome!
Hi everyone, and welcome to Self Evident's oral history training and archiving program. My name is Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan and I am the Community Producer here at Self Evident. I am also an oral history educator, a cultural organizer, a DJ, a dancer, among many, many other things. I am so incredibly honored to be building and leading this oral history program, alongside researcher and designer, Jen Ng, our Self Evident team, and our team of advisors and educators across the country.
I've always believed that we, and I mean all of us, are all storytellers and have stories worth sharing, even if we have never had the chance to share, hear, or see them before. So we are so excited to have you join us for our ever-growing oral history program.
Who we are
So who are we? Who is Self Evident? Well, we first launched as a podcast with the hopes of improving Asian American representation in public radio. Our team here has spent three years working from the grassroots to build a platform for a full range of Asian American perspectives so often erased from the national conversation.
At the intersection of media and community organizing, we are very specially positioned to support local Asian American communities to imagine and engage with a form of representation that goes far beyond being seen and feeling heard. Our process of reporting, sourcing, editing, and promoting stories as a media production company offers an alternative to widely-accepted practices within media, television, radio, history by really grounding our work in participatory, culturally competent storytelling for, by, and with our communities.
Why are we doing this?
So why are we at Self Evident even doing this project? Well, our work doesn't stop at our podcast and reporting because we see the power of stories to bring people together. For us, stories are just the starting point. The work we've done to produce nuanced and challenging stories about Asian Americans, then also collaborate with local listeners to have conversations around those stories, has clearly shown us how storytelling can grow the capacity for underrepresented people to create structures of mutual support and care with each other and move our country towards healing and justice.
We see storytelling as a superpower that can really fuel movements and strengthen our relationships with each other. Self Evident aims to develop this superpower within the next generation of Asian Americans to tell and preserve meaningful stories, rooted in strong community relationships.
Through our podcast production studio, we've already made this commitment to developing emerging storytellers in the audio industry, where leading institutions often fall short in providing the resources and mentorship required to nurture marginalized voices who deserve to tell their own stories. Many of our podcast episodes are built around collaboration with non-professionals, the sharing of equipment and skills with other Asian storytellers, and partnership with like-minded organizations.
So this oral history training and archiving program to gather, preserve and celebrate Asian American experiences is a natural step for us at Self Evident, as we build on three years of work to become an even more supportive and impactful home for Asian American voices.
And, of course, our work is made possible with our vast and ever-growing community of listeners, supporters, advisers, collaborators, who have believed in us and contributed their time, care, and expertise, to our work and this oral history program. This program is rooted in the collaborative work and existing range of expertise that has inspired us in the first place. And as this program continues to grow, we imagine and envision a collaborative effort that doesn't just belong to us at Self Evident, but actively supports a network of partner contributors with shared long-term goals of making oral history education more accessible, building a digital archive rooted in community ownership of stories, and drawing on the archive to amplify the value and impact of Asian American stories.
Our oral history program
We are so excited for you to join us for our pilot oral history program. We want to emphasize that the program you're about to use is still a work-in-progress — and it always will be. For now though, our video training, website, and digital archive are the barebones versions of what we hope to build and grow into the future, with the help of additional funding and your valuable feedback. So we welcome any and all feedback from you on how we can make this program even better in the future.
Designed for all experience levels, our program walks you through the full process of an oral history interview from start to finish. Whether you're a first-timer or a veteran storyteller, our program wants to make oral history easy and accessible to a diverse range of storytellers and our communities.
We see oral history education and the digital archive as two sides of the same coin. Combining oral history education and a digital archive, this program will give you the skills to conduct and record an interview, and it will also build a home for our stories with our growing digital archive. With our education toolkit's virtual work-at-your-own-pace lessons, it'll feel like I'm right there with you, walking you through each step to create your own oral history. From developing strong relationships with your narrators to conducting and recording audio interviews, our toolkit sets you up to learn the relationship skills and technical skills needed to conduct and record oral histories with members of your communities. With these skills, you'll then conduct and record your own oral history interview with someone in your life, then upload it as one of the first entries of our public digital archive.
As more and more storytellers add to this living, breathing archive, we hope that it will not only become a home for a wide range of first-person Asian American stories, but also a place to learn more about the vast diversity of the Asian American experience.
How to use this toolkit & digital archive
So how do you use this oral history training and archiving program? Well, we have built this program to be flexible for you to choose how to use it, allowing you to work at your own pace and pick and choose what you need and want to learn. Each lesson walks you through one step of the oral history process and includes step-by-step video training with me, activities to practice your new skills, and additional resources to learn more.
All of our video lessons can be paused and replayed at any time, so that you can learn and practice at your own pace. Throughout our toolkit, our lessons will cover topics like: what is oral history? Where do we fit in as Asian Americans? How to prepare yourself as the interviewer, how to prepare your narrator, how to ask thoughtful interview questions, how to set up your interview recording day, and finally archiving your interview into our digital archive — and so much more!
Participate as a Contributor
One way that you can participate in this oral history program is as a Contributor. Whether you want to learn how to conduct your first-ever oral history interview to learn more about someone in your life or you want to polish up your conversation and relationship skills in your everyday life, this program welcomes Contributors from all experienced levels.
To prepare yourself for your oral history interview, you can choose to complete all of our toolkit lessons from start to finish, or you can pick and choose the lessons that would be most helpful to you in conducting and recording an interview for our digital archive.
Rather than completing the toolkit all at once, then putting those skills into practice after you've completed it all, we highly recommend that you practice the skills you learn after each lesson, all along the way. Then after you conduct and record your oral history interview, we welcome you to upload your recording as an entry to our digital archive. You can learn more about becoming a Contributor by checking out our project's Frequently Asked Questions.
Participate as an Educator
You can also participate in this oral history program as an Educator, whether that's in the classroom, in the community, at your local nonprofit, or even at home. If you are looking to bring oral history into your classroom, or you want to train members of your community to strengthen their interpersonal skills or build your own community oral history project, you are an Educator in our eyes.
This flexible toolkit allows Educators of all kinds to pick and choose specific lessons, as well as existing Asian American stories to fit into their classroom curricula and student learning outcomes, professional development training, and community projects.
We encourage our Educators to try our program as Contributors too. This firsthand experience with our program's lessons, as well as recording and archiving an oral history entry into our digital archive will make integrating and explaining this program to your community even easier.
All of our materials are free to use. We ask that you credit us at Self Evident for providing these oral history education materials. We can't wait to see what you do with them.
Helpful tips for using our oral history program
Before we launch into the oral history education toolkit, here are some helpful tips for using our oral history program.
Set up your space for mindfulness
First, you'll want to set up your personal space for mindfulness. Throughout these lessons, you'll not only be learning a whole new world of information about oral history, but you're also going to be pushed to unlearn a lot of what we all have been taught about history up to this point. You'll also be sharing and hearing lots of personal stories.
All of this combined can make us feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, especially around other people. It's important to set these expectations with yourself and with your community members before diving into the training. Whether you are a Contributor or an Educator, we encourage everyone to prepare themselves and their personal space to feel as grounded and comfortable as possible, just in case questions or conversations in the training bring up new or uncomfortable feelings.
We also recommend reminding everyone one to two days before to set themselves up comfortably for the training. Some examples that have worked for us are the following: think about what you need to stay present for the full duration of the training. If you're the Educator, be sure to let everyone know how long the training will last. This could impact how each person thinks about setting up for the training. Then you want to bring snacks, tea, water, if you need it. And you want to use the bathroom beforehand. And especially for virtual trainings, you're going to want to find your most quiet place with all your distractions turned off. You're going to want to put on headphones, if you have them. And then you're going to want to make sure you're comfortable and cozy. And finally, as you're sitting down, you want to take a nice deep breath.
Set community guidelines
If we are coming together as a group in training, it is so important to provide a safe and comfortable space for everyone to learn, ask difficult questions, and share personal stories. Remember that how we interact with each other can impact how comfortable we feel tackling these difficult questions and sharing our personal stories with one another. For group training, we suggest starting each session by setting community guidelines. In our experience, we have found that these example community guidelines are a good place to start.
First, we are not here for debate or solutions, so please keep from trying to convince people of "the right answer". And then, uncomfortable questions are great. We're here to start exploring questions that you'll keep digging into after today. There's no right or wrong way to do this. It's okay for your thoughts to be works-in-progress. You're not required to have an answer by the end of the training. Everyone goes at their own pace. This is a space for you all to deepen your relationships with yourselves and with each other. So please share as much as you are comfortable sharing and come with an openness to listen and learn from each other's experiences. And finally, be mindful of the space you're taking up or the space you're offering to others. It would be great for everyone to feel like they have the room to speak if they want. In addition to this list, we highly recommend that you ask for any additional community guidelines that would make this space more comfortable and safe for your community members to feel brave exploring difficult questions and sharing their personal stories.
Integrate a land acknowledgment
As we come together to listen, share, and learn the histories of our communities who call this country home, we have to remember the communities who cared for and continue to care for this land long before we called it home. So we acknowledge and honor that we gather on unceded Indigenous lands that also hold the joys, struggles, and histories of the past, present, and future generations of Indigenous peoples across the United States, also known as Turtle Island.
As we continue to challenge the exclusion of Asian Americans' histories and voices from the official telling of our country's history, it is so important to remember that this erasure is deeply connected to the ongoing legacies of U.S. imperialism and violence that have also led to the erasure of Indigenous histories and voices for centuries. At the same time, we must also remember that our work is informed and inspired by the resilience and leadership of Indigenous communities who have long fought for their land, communities, and histories to be remembered and honored.
So before you begin, we encourage you to honor those who came before us in this country with a land acknowledgment to the Indigenous people to whom the land belongs.
If you have never done or seen a land acknowledgment before, you can start with Native Land Digital to find out whose Indigenous land you currently occupy and the history of the land, and the communities who care for it. Then we encourage you to reflect on why you personally are choosing to do this land acknowledgment and your personal connection to it. Feel free to use our and Native Governance Center's Beyond Land Acknowledgment: A Guide as starting points for learning more and making connections between our overlapping histories and efforts to fully honor our past, present, and future generations in this country. Finally, we even further encourage you to move beyond your land acknowledgment, to take action, and to learn from and support local Indigenous communities and efforts to preserve, amplify, and honor Indigenous community histories and lives.
Grow this program with us!
OK we are almost ready to start the oral history education toolkit! But before we dive in, I wanted to remind you all that, just like our digital archive grows with every story, narrator, and contributor, our oral history program is a living work-in-progress that grows from our community partnerships and feedback. In this pilot phase, we are still learning and we are always looking to improve and grow this program with our Contributors, Educators and community members. So if you have questions, feedback, or you want to share about your experience using this oral history training and archiving program, you can send a message directly to me, Rochelle, here at Self Evident. We would love to hear from you. Enjoy!