Oral histories can be a thoughtful way to bring Native voices to students without an intermediary interpreting or adding their own point of view. The Veterans History Project recently launched an online presentation of interviews with Navajo Code Talkers. The resource gives students an opportunity to hear from Native veterans about their experiences before, during, and after their military service.
One feature of this collection that is especially helpful for classroom use is that the interviews have descriptive timestamps, which help to identify segments that align with teaching goals and students’ interests. Another benefit of this feature is that interview segments are short, typically between two and five minutes. While the interviews focus on the experiences of serving as a Code Talker, interviewees also share details about their life before military service, which for many included time at Native American boarding schools. Interviewees also reflect on daily life in military service, recollections of specific wartime battles, what they did after the war, and challenges they faced as Native servicemen. As teachers may anticipate, not all topics in an oral history will be appropriate for all students. The menu of topics and times in select interviews is quite helpful for finding components of an interview to assign to students.
Before integrating oral histories into a classroom lesson or activity, teachers might want to preview the interviews with attention to which interviews are most accessible and appropriate for their students. Oral history interviews, while wonderful for offering first person point of view and multiple perspectives, can also be challenging for students. Interviewees may speak slowly or have accents and speech patterns that are unfamiliar to students. The teacher’s guide for analyzing oral history interviews offers prompts and analysis questions to use or adapt to support students’ engagement with an interview.
For more context about this online exhibit and additional background on Native American code talkers, teachers and students might read this post from the Folklife Today blog, a publication of the American Folklife Center and the Veterans History Project.
If you use any of these resources or have suggestions for integrating oral histories into your teaching, we’d love to hear about it! Please share your experiences in the comments.
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