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Reviewed by:
  • The Canadian Oral History Reader ed. by Kristina R. Llewellyn, Alexander Freund, and Nolan Reilly
  • Laurie Mercier
Kristina R. Llewellyn, Alexander Freund, and Nolan Reilly, eds., The Canadian Oral History Reader, (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2015)

A half century ago oral historians began reshaping the discipline of history by recording the stories of ordinary and often marginalized groups of [End Page 321] people previously ignored by the profession. Oral history became an important source and method for creating and writing a more inclusive social and labour history. Initially enthusiastic about its democratic and transformative possibilities, in recent decades scholars and collectors have become more circumspect about the interview’s subjectivity. Indeed no other historical source has undergone such penetrating scrutiny in journals, conferences, and books. Oral history may have gone mainstream – it is now central to many 20th- and 21st-century studies, exhibitions, and media – but its very robustness has prompted greater scholarly reflexivity: can oral historians truly collaborate with their subjects and create a “shared authority,” as Michael Frisch once proposed? How do researchers attend to new ethical guidelines for working with oppressed populations? How do interpreters reach beyond the “facts” revealed in an interview to understand the multiple meanings, silences, and “misrememberings”? How have critical theories such as Marxism, postmodernism, and feminism informed and complicated oral history work? What role can oral history play in advocacy?

The Canadian Oral History Reader pulls together some of the seminal work of Canadian oral historians of the past two decades to explore these questions. The collection offers a useful primer for beginning practitioners, a thoughtful review of theoretical considerations for more experienced interviewers, and a teaching tool for oral history classes and workshops. That it highlights best practices within Canada – addressing the dearth of Canadian material in preceding English-language anthologies and handbooks – also makes it unique, even though most of the essays will be of interest to an international audience.

Editors Kristina R. Llewellyn, Alexander Freund, and Nolan Reilly have assembled selections that speak to the variety of oral history ethical, theoretical, and practical issues. Thirteen of the sixteen essays have appeared previously in journals such as the Oral History Forum d’histoire orale, Canadian Historical Review, Journal of Academic Ethics, and Disability and Society, and other anthologies published between 1992 and 2013. They are organized under four main sections: methodology, interpretation, preservation and presentation, and advocacy. The editors’ introduction provides a summary of the evolution of Canadian oral history work, although one wishes that they provided more analysis of the state of the field based on the pioneering essays featured here. The volume concludes with an afterword by noted oral historian Ronald Grele and a bibliography.

One of the strengths of the collection is its focus on Indigenous oral history, reflecting the leading role of Canadian researchers and Aboriginal communities in using oral history as a tool for teaching, telling, and understanding. From her work with Yukon elders Julie Cruikshank reveals how the meaning behind stories often do not appear straightforward and depend on local metaphors and narrative conventions. The many messages in these narratives help sustain “human connections across clan, gender, and generation in the face of enormous pressures.” (194) Winona Wheeler of the Fisher River Cree First Nation finds that efforts to reconstruct community memories sometimes pose challenges, as Elders can forget details about significant events, admitting that they “hadn’t really listened” or didn’t realize something might be important to remember. (288) Trauma and alienation contributed to these lost memories, and Wheeler turned to the archives to help flesh out Fisher River history. But she stresses the difference between academic and Indigenous approaches: Indigenous historians “begin at community and end [End Page 322] up at archives,” determining first what is important work to the community rather than to the scholar. (291)

Labour, feminist, and working-class historians were among the first to embrace oral history as a method and theorize its potential. Joan Sangster offers a chapter on the politics and praxis of working-class oral histories, which cautions against embracing current cultural approaches that discourage “identifying the acuity of previous work or the limitations of current work...

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