07 Erik Holland Oral Tradition

One of the difficulties that I see with interviews taped interviews is its laid down once maybe it’s edited maybe it’s not maybe you can come back and put another layer in or a follow-up question or whatever but it’s laid down once an oral history is something that would be told repeatedly and the recipient was active in the conversation by their silence and attention rather than engaged in the conversation by their attentiveness in question so it’s a different kind of learning and I if I was a young man I would go in and go back and go into brain science because I think that where things are kept may be different in the brain depending upon how the interactions are and what synapses fire I mean you know now we’re often stuff that I don’t know anything about touching talk about but my point is that if grandpa tells a story and grandson is in a situation and comes to Grandpa and sits at his feet and listens grandpa knows what the situation was with that younger and adapts the oral history in an effective way to instill the knowledge that needs to be instilled at that time with that person audience for that purpose grandson comes next year having been out playing the escorting flute and Grandpa has a different story that’s still the oral tradition and it’s tied to this boy with this name or whatever I mean I’m making this up to help you understand but I think that that oral tradition piece is hugely important but it’s flexible and European history is not exactly that way it’s written by the domit culture and so I think that’s one of the challenges and so the advantage of museums being partners with schools is that there does need to be some structure to learning so that Johnny and Sue can go off to the oil patch and work and stay in North Dakota but there also needs to be some flexibility so that Sue can recognize that she can be a roughneck or whatever I mean so that I think that the ability that a museum can offer to here’s a different perspective another way to look at things it is part of where that oral tradition comes from it’s it’s a program rather than a tour if I give you a tour and I give you a tour and I give you a tour by the 10th one you might as well run a tape it’s gonna be the same tour if I give you a program I’m gonna look at your plastic coffee cup today and I’m gonna look at your metal one tomorrow and I’m gonna look at something else the next day and we’ll still emphasize similar things but it’s going to be a different program because I’ve got an object I have a strategy for connecting that I know who my audience is I know where my location is that I’m going to be doing it and I know what my learning objectives are that’s the same thing that a teacher does in a classroom on an individual basis and so I mean I think that we’re in a point we need to be in a partnership together is to get to your answer and I your question about oral history just was so interesting I went to a program by a winter count keeper a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about the gathering that would happen in the spring of the year when the family would get together and talk about all the things that happened that year all the things that happened that year and the count keeper would listen so it’s coming in as that conversation came to condesa Lucien or conclusion he said the count keeper and the group would decide what the image was going to be to go on the winter count well the count keeper has that image that’s stars falling it’s 1834 it’s the you know the great Pleiades men dance came into Maximillian at Fort Clark and told them about the sky was the Holly I mean the year their stars fell all over the Northern Plains on every winter town that’s the story but if a whole family sat together and talked about everything else that happened that year and that’s the one that gets chosen and that’s the document the winter count keeper has all the rest of those stories too that are attached to that image the next year when they go back the count keeper reviews the count with everybody and they talk about all of the stories around every one of those and so it’s a continuous history it isn’t just a dot on the calendar I mean and you think about winter counts that way we look at them and it’s like oh this was the year of the sky file this was you know whatever no it’s all this other stuff and this is the way I can remember it and that is what you can do in a museum so a teacher can come in with their class and they don’t have to do the same thing every time they can go in and move with it and so it keeps them engaged it keeps the students engaged it keeps Johnny who’s coming at it from a very angry and doesn’t know why is their perspective can be involved in a conversation in a different way because the teacher knows that I’ve got to deal with this behavior issue it here’s a way that I can do it because I’m familiar with what’s here and get Johnny and look and that busting rock as a way of making a living four hundred years ago or four thousand years ago and then Johnny’s just acted out because he’s frustrated like I was as a kid not necessarily your best student but I think I did okay