5. Oral Histories, Gathering Our Voice¶
IRIS designed the Gathering Our Voice program to celebrate and strengthen our shared sense of place. Since 2005, we have worked to build our capacity to collect, share, and preserve positive stories of economic, community and environmental stewardship throughout North Central Washington. Stories that inspire us and spark new ideas. Stories that bolster our confidence and connect us with others. And stories that help us see the land, our communities, and ourselves in new ways.
There is so much to learn from the people whose stories are part of this collection. This handbook highlights some of the ways IRIS has shared the knowledge and experiences of these interviewees along with some suggestions to help you explore and contribute to the collections. We look forward to receiving your feedback about what you find here along with ways you are using the collections.
5.1. The Gathering Our Voice Story¶
For me, the story of this collection has roots that go back to Logan, Utah and the time I spent in the 1980s earning a master’s degree in ecology at Utah State University. My research, focused on the distribution of soil fungi needed to restore a strip-mine in Wyoming where sage grouse and antelope once played, involved seasonal field work followed by many months of sample analysis in the lab. I developed a keen appreciation for National Public Radio during this time – an appreciation that inspired me with the idea of producing a documentary about wetlands, a critical and threatened habitat in Utah and across the nation.
I took a course in documentary writing, secured some grant funding from the university, state agencies, and the Utah Endowment for the Humanities, and spent the following year producing programs on environmental issues for KUSU-FM, the local NPR affiliate. Never had I learned so much in one year – never had I had access to such a diverse group of people who were willing to take the time to share their stories. Ever since that time I’ve been hooked on the process of gathering people’s voices - their perspective, their laughs, their gems of wisdom – and reflecting them back in ways that honor the trust and respect with which they were shared.
The Gathering Our Voice program was launched in 2005 to cultivate the practice of collecting, sharing and caring for recorded oral histories here in North Central Washington. With early support from the Icicle Fund and our local museums, that serve as secondary archives for most interviews, IRIS has worked with hundreds of people to conduct interviews, prepare transcripts, and create programs designed to build community by celebrating common values, best practices, and love of place. See Gathering Our Voice Interviewing Guide.
2009 Sustaining Success and 2010 Foodways & Byways Storyboard workshop participants in Pateros¶
While the interviews are in a common format, the programs we have created to highlight and share them have changed along with the available technology including radio, video, print, internet and device applications.
- 2006
- 2007
- 2008
- 2009
- 2011
- 2011-2014
- 2012-2021
- 2015-2021
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
5.2. Using the Gathering Our Voice Collection¶
Unlike the success stories and food systems collections, the oral histories in the Gathering Our Voice collection are conversations between and among people who have generously agreed to share these recordings with current and future community members. Please listen in the spirit of trust and respect with which these were shared. See Gathering Our Voice Terms of Use and Gathering Our Voice Release Form.
You will encounter so many interesting stories in this collection and hear so many things to ponder. Just as a field guide can serve to orient new users to a place, such as the Quincy Basin or the Okanogan Highlands, the videos and Listening Post Network content in this collection can provide an entry point to the deeper stories shared in individual interviews. While we worked as regional teams between 2008-2011 to outline the stories we produced and to identify “must use” segments or cuts of a given interview, we necessarily had to leave most of any single person’s story out. So, one way to approach the collection is to watch a video or explore the Listening Post Network sites first and then listen to the full interviews on the topics that are of interest to you be it a particular family, place or category.
5.2.1. Listen for story seeds¶
Harriet Bullitt, Leavenworth¶
As you listen to interviews make note of the one-liners, i.e., those quotes that stick in your mind and hold meaning for you. You might use these comments to spark a creative work such as a short story, a poem, or a song. What kind of story comes to mind, for example, when you read this quote from Harriet Bullitt speaking about her childhood?
“It was a very creative horse that was able to survive our days together.”
These one-liners can also be used to highlight the persistence, learning and camaraderie needed to achieve stewardship success as the following quotes from Jim Small, Marilyn Gearhart and Mary Thompson illustrate.
Click images to see interviews!
5.2.2. Share a Picture of Health¶
What does your picture of health look like? What combination of self-care, community and environmental activities and conditions contribute to your sense of well-being? Visit a Picture of Health to see how others in our region answer this question. Upload your own photo here.
5.2.3. Focus on one interview¶
Unlike some production-based interviews where the interviewer is looking for specific sound bites, Gathering Our Voice interviews are typically relaxed, wide-ranging, and between 45 – 80 minutes in length. And while we follow the convention of not sharing interview questions with the interviewees prior to an interview, there are many strong quotes that come out as each interviewee shares their story with you.
Once an interview is transcribed, it is a pleasurable process to read through it, highlight those quotes that strike you as the most meaningful, and then use them to weave together an essay that can be shared in a newsletter, newspaper column, or blog. By the time you’re done with that process you will not only feel like you know that person better but will feel admiration and respect for their journey.
That’s the experience I’ve had anyway in using interviews to write Gathering Our Voice columns for The Wenatchee World. Here’s an example based on an interview in this archive that Amy Stork did with Fran Johnson in Twisp in 2009.
5.2.3.1. Help Wanted¶
You can help make some of the interviews in this collection more accessible by volunteering to listen to an interview and proof an existing draft transcript or complete one for an interview that has not yet been transcribed. While IRIS has used some transcript services to complete many of the transcripts in this collection the best ones, by far, have been done by the people who live here. See Transcriber Position Description to help. Many of the interviewees represented in this collection have passed on, but others whose interviews are included here might be open to a follow-up interview. If you’d like to conduct a second interview with an interviewee or with someone whose story is not part of the collection yet see the Gathering Our Voice Interviewing Guide.
5.2.3.2. Featured Project¶
In 2016 the Waterville School teamed up with IRIS and the Douglas County Historical Society to design a Local History Class that engaged students and adults in reviewing and discussing oral history transcripts and conducting interviews with longtime residents in a classroom setting. View the Gathering Our Voice Study Guide for Classroom & Community Groups.
Local History Class, Contact Kieth Finkbeiner, kfinkbeiner@waterville.wednet.edu
5.2.4. Piece together your landscape history¶
The value of individual quotes and interviews grows when they are woven together to create a picture of landscape change. Essays, videos or slide programs based on segments from oral histories can be used to help bring the community together to learn and celebrate their home and to inform action. In the case of the Moses Coulee-Beezley Hills, conversations with several longtime residents helped me and my husband Chuck Warner learn more about past land uses that could inform ecological restoration. View the whole story and timeline.
What landscape in the region holds meaning for you? What are you curious to know more about? It could be the place you grew up, where you currently work, or a place that you only visit but feel strongly attached to. Search the Gathering Our Voice collection for interviews about that place that can provide historical context. Broaden your search to include stories from the Success Story Exchange and Food Systems collections that can expand your picture of place and provide examples of how people are caring for it. Create a timeline of that place and use it to frame a Gathering Our Voice essay to share on the Thinking Like a Community blog.
5.2.5. Come together to share your story¶
There are several group interviews in the Gathering Our Voice collection, an outcome that is a bit surprising given my reluctance to engage in this practice. I figured that there would be so much background noise and people talking over each other that an interview with more than three people would be hard to hear and understand. I’m happy to report that I was wrong. Group interviews are a great way to sample the history of an organization, community or family even if the resulting recording is not high quality enough for production purposes. However, even this barrier can be overcome with a setup in which each interviewee has a microphone. See the Interviewing Guide for more information. Find links to a few samples below.
(L-R) Apollo Club, Confluence Gallery, and Orondo Community Group Interviews¶
5.2.6. Focus multiple interviews on a topic¶
A group interview can be a great way to kick off a longer-term project that involves multiple individual interviews about an organization or place. You will find several examples of these organization-sponsored projects in the Gathering Our Voice collection including:
Douglas Church, 100th anniversary project and Listening Post Network project
The Nature Conservancy of Washington, 50th anniversary project
Wenatchee Valley College, 75th anniversary project and Listening Post project
Greater Waterville Community Listening Post Network project
Apple Capital Recreation Loop Trail Listening Post Network project
Rocky Reach Trail Listening Post Network project
(L-R) Wenatchee Valley College, Douglas Church, Nature Conservancy of Washington¶