oral history
Old Photos of the Inuit
Between 1903 and 1909, Douglas Moodie was stationed in Fullerton Harbour, Nunavut, and in Churchill, Manitoba, with the Northwest Mounted Police. Along with his wife Geraldine, the couple also traveled to Quebec and Labrador taking over 1,000 photographs of the Arctic scenery and the Inuit people along the way. Many of them are sharp and […]
Tahitian Storytelling
Charles Ariitetoa Rochette, a 54-year old Tahitian man, became an orero, a public speaker, so he could help preserve and transmit the culture of his society. La Dépêche de Tahiti, a prominent daily newspaper in French Polynesia, published a story about him last Wednesday. Mr. Rochette gained his knowledge and aptitude for transmitting Tahitian legends […]
Recollections of Tristan Islanders [journal article review]
During an oral history interviewing project in September 2006, the Tristan Islanders revealed their suspicions about having their history interpreted by others. Ann Day, a British social historian, describes the project and the reactions of the Islanders to her and to her work in a recent journal article. The project began when a visiting Scottish […]
Inuit Oral History of the Lost Franklin Expedition
A Canadian writer claims to have uncovered some interesting new evidence about the 150 year old mystery of the lost Franklin expedition. The findings are discussed by author Dorothy Harley Eber in her new book Encounters on the Passage: Inuit Meet the Explorers, which is set for publication by the University of Toronto Press in […]
Inuit Perceptions of History [journal article review]
When a young Inuit man commented, “time is nine to five,” he was showing that he accepted the rigid, Western concept of time only when he had to. His remark also illustrates the ways the Inuit negotiate with Western cultural values. A recent journal article by Yvon Csonka explores the very different conceptions of time […]
