The Bakweri (or Kwe ) are a Bantu ethnic group of the Republic of Cameroon . They are closely related to Cameroon's coastal peoples (the Sawa ), particularly the Duala and Isubu .
85-544: Early survey discussion of these topics may be found in Ardener 1956 and Dugast 1949 According to Bakweri oral traditions , that they originated from Ibibio land , the area southwest of Mount Cameroon . The Bakweri likely migrated to their present home east of the mountain in the mid-18th century. From the foothills, they gradually spread to the coast, and up the Mungo River and the various creeks that empty into it. In
170-484: A discipline has fairly low barriers to entry, so it is an act in which laypeople can readily participate. In his book Doing Oral History , Donald Ritchie wrote that "oral history has room for both the academic and the layperson. With reasonable training... anyone can conduct a useable oral history." This is especially meaningful in cases like the Holocaust, where survivors may be less comfortable telling their story to
255-584: A flurry of methodological discussions as Palestinian oral history research reached its zenith in the latter quarter of the 20th century. Some of these researchers published their recommendations in manuals specifically designed to standardize and inform oral history research within the Palestinian context. Notable Palestinian oral history projects include the American University of Beirut 's Palestinian Oral History Archive ( POHA ), and
340-491: A focus on national leaders in the United States, but has expanded to include groups representing the entire population. In Britain, the influence of 'history from below' and interviewing people who had been 'hidden from history' was more influential. In both countries, elite oral history has emerged as an important strand. Scientists, for example, have been covered in numerous oral history projects. Doel (2003) discusses
425-522: A full virtual museum with intense use of oral history. Czech oral history began to develop beginning in the 1980s with a focus on social movements and political activism. The practice of oral history and any attempts to document stories prior to this is fairly unknown. The practice of oral history began to take shape in the 1990s. In 2000, The Oral History Center (COH) at the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic (AV ČR)
510-550: A journalist than they would be to a historian or family member. In the United States, there are several organizations dedicated to doing oral history which are not affiliated with universities or specific locations. StoryCorps is one of the most well-known of these: following the model of the Federal Writers’ Project created as part of the Works Progress Administration , StoryCorps’ mission
595-504: A lesson plan that encourages the study of local community history through interviews. By studying grassroots activism and the lived experiences of its participants, her high school students came to appreciate how African Americans worked to end Jim Crow laws in the 1950s. Mark D. Naison (2005) describes the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP), an oral community history project developed by
680-630: A professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, traveled to Europe to record long interviews with "displaced persons"—most of them Holocaust survivors. Using the first device capable of capturing hours of audio—the wire recorder —Boder came back with the first recorded Holocaust testimonials and in all likelihood the first recorded oral histories of significant length. Over some forty years, Fran Leeper Buss interviewed marginalized women such as Jesusita Aragon ,
765-571: A public voice to neglected groups, such as women, illiterates, political leftists, and ethnic minorities. In 1987, at Universidade De Santiago de Compostela, Marc Wouters and Isaura Varela started an oral history project focused on the Spanish Civil War, exile, and migration. The project explored victims of the war and the Francoist Dictatorship and includes 2100 interviews and 800 hours of audio. Oral history began with
850-815: A tongue that is closely related to Bakole and Wumboko . Mokpwe is part of the family of Duala languages in the Bantu group of the Niger–Congo language family. Neighbouring peoples often utilise Mokpwe as a trade language , due largely to the spread of the tongue by early missionaries. This is particularly true among the Isubu, many of whom are bilingual in Duala or Mokpwe. In addition, individuals who have attended school or lived in an urban centre usually speak Cameroonian Pidgin English or standard English . A growing number of
935-585: A traditionally trained midwife, and Maria Elena Lucas a migrant farm worker activist, using transcripts of the interviews to write their life stories. Many state and local historical societies have oral history programs. Sinclair Kopp (2002) reported on the Oregon Historical Society 's program. It began in 1976 with the hiring of Charles Digregorio, who had studied at Columbia with Nevins. Thousands of sound recordings, reel-to-reel tapes, transcriptions, and radio broadcasts have made it one of
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#17327757486121020-687: A vehicle for "history from above" from Malaysia and Singapore. In terms of "history from below", various oral history initiatives are being undertaken in Cambodia in an effort to record lived experiences from the rule of the Khmer Rouge regime while survivors are still living. These initiative take advantage of crowdsourced history to uncover the silences imposed on the oppressed. Two prominent and ongoing oral history projects out of South Asia stem from time periods of ethnic violence that were decades apart: 1947 and 1984. The 1947 Partition Archive
1105-490: A written work (published or unpublished) based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries . Knowledge presented by Oral History (OH) is unique in that it shares the tacit perspective, thoughts, opinions and understanding of the interviewee in its primary form. The term is sometimes used in a more general sense to refer to the study of information about past events that witnesses told anybody else, but professional historians usually consider this to be
1190-501: Is a relatively recent development. Since the 1960s, oral history has been accorded increasing attention on institutional and individual levels, representing "history from above" and "history from below". In Oral History and Public Memories, Blackburn writes about oral history as a tool that was used "by political elites and state-run institutions to contribute to the goal of national building" in postcolonial Southeast Asian countries. Blackburn draws most of his examples of oral history as
1275-516: Is a traditional festival of the Duala, although today all of Cameroon's coastal Sawa peoples are invited to participate. It originated as a means of training Duala children the skills of warfare. Now, however, the main focus is on communicating with the ancestors and asking them for guidance and protection for the future. The festivities also include armed combat, beauty pageants , pirogue races, and traditional wrestling . The Mpo'o brings together
1360-592: Is also grown as a crop in the Philippines . Traditionally, Xanthosoma has been a subsistence crop with excess sold at local markets, but in the United States , large numbers of Latin American immigrants have created a market for commercial production. In general, production has yet to meet demand in some areas. In Polynesia, Alocasia macrorrhizos ( ‘ape ) was considered a famine food , used only in
1445-508: Is one of the important aspects to the technology-based oral historiography. These made it easier to collect and disseminate oral history since access to millions of documents on national and international levels can be instantaneous. Since the early 1970s, oral history in Britain has grown from being a method in folklore studies (see for example the work of the School of Scottish Studies in
1530-492: Is partly attributed to the development of information technology, which allowed a method rooted in orality to contribute to research, particularly the use of personal testimonies made in a wide variety of public settings. For instance, oral historians have discovered the endless possibilities of posting data and information on the Internet , making them readily available to scholars, teachers, and ordinary people. This reinforced
1615-612: Is the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut , a department of the University Library of Yale . Historians , folklorists , anthropologists , human geographers , sociologists , journalists , linguists , and many others employ some form of interviewing in their research. Although multi-disciplinary, oral historians have promoted common ethics and standards of practice, most importantly
1700-588: Is thought to signal that the field of oral history studies in China has finally moved into a new phase of organized development. From 2003 to 2004, Professors Marianne Kamp and Russell Zanca researched agricultural collectivization in Uzbekistan in part by using oral history methodology to fill in gaps in information missing from the Central State Archive of Uzbekistan. The goal of the project
1785-458: Is to record the stories of Americans from all walks of life. On contrast to the scholarly tradition of oral history, StoryCorps subjects are interviewed by people they know. There are a number of StoryCorps initiatives that have targeted specific populations or problems, following in the tradition of using oral history as a method to amplify voices that might otherwise be marginalized. The development of digital databases with their text-search tools
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#17327757486121870-753: The British Library Sound Archive in the oral history collection. In one of the largest memory project anywhere, The BBC in 2003-6 invited its audiences to send in recollections of the homefront in the Second World War. It put 47,000 of the recollections online, along with 15,000 photographs. Alessandro Portelli is an Italian oral historian. He is known for his work which compared workers' experiences in Harlan County, Kentucky and Terni, Italy. Other oral historians have drawn on Portelli's analysis of memory, identity, and
1955-643: The Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico , where it is used in alcapurrias or boiled. It is grown in Trinidad and Tobago , Guyana and Jamaica to make the popular callaloo dish, and in St. Kitts and Nevis to make tannia fritters . It is also grown in West Africa , now a major producer, where it can be used as a replacement for yams in a popular regional dish called fufu . Xanthosoma
2040-576: The League of Nations . Great Britain took control of Bakweri lands. Great Britain integrated its portion of Cameroon with the neighbouring colony of Nigeria, setting the new province's capital at Buea. The British practised a policy of indirect rule , entrusting greater powers to Bakweri chiefs in Buea. The new colonials maintained the German policies of ousting uncooperative rulers and of impressing workers for
2125-698: The Oral History Society has played a key role in facilitating and developing the use of oral history. A more complete account of the history of oral history in Britain and Northern Ireland can be found at "Making Oral History" on the Institute of Historical Research 's website. The Bureau of Military History conducted over 1700 interviews with veterans of the First World War and Irish revolutionary period in Ireland. The documentation
2210-649: The Palestinian Oral History Map , Columbia University 's Oral History Project in New York , Duke University 's Palestinian Oral History Project, the Palestinian Rural History Project (PRHP), Palestine Remembered , and Zochrot . The rise of oral history is a new trend in historical studies in China that began in the late twentieth century. Some oral historians, stress the collection of eyewitness accounts of
2295-501: The Works Progress Administration (WPA)—sent out interviewers to collect accounts from various groups, including surviving witnesses of the Civil War, slavery, and other major historical events. The Library of Congress also began recording traditional American music and folklore onto acetate discs . With the development of audio tape recordings after World War II, the task of oral historians became easier. In 1946, David P. Boder ,
2380-495: The inflorescence is enclosed within a leaf-like spathe . When the inflorescence is ready to open, the upper part of the spathe opens and exposes the staminate area of the spadix; the basal area of the spathe remains closed, forming a spacious chamber (i.e., the spathe tube) that encloses the pistillate and sterile flowers (Garcia-Robledo et al. ( 2004 , 2005a , 2005b )). The inflorescences last for two nights and are protogynous in some, but not all species. They change from
2465-432: The 1950s) to becoming a key component in community histories. Oral history continues to be an important means by which non-academics can actively participate in the compilation and study of history. Practitioners in a wide range of academic disciplines have also developed the method into a way of recording, understanding, and archiving narrated memories. Influences have included women's history and labour history. In Britain,
2550-553: The 1960s and '70s, influenced by the rise of new social history, interviewing began to be employed more often when historians investigated history from below . Whatever the field or focus of a project, oral historians attempt to record the memories of many different people when researching a given event. Interviewing a single person provides a single perspective. People misremember events or distort their accounts for various reasons. By interviewing widely, oral historians seek points of agreement among many different sources, and also record
2635-689: The Bakoko, Bakweri, and Limba at Edéa . The festival commemorates the ancestors and allows the participants to consider the problems facing the groups and humanity as a whole. Assemblies, secret societies, and other groups play an important role in keeping the Bakweri unified, helping them set goals, and giving them a venue to find solutions to common problems. Secret societies include the Leingu, Maalé (Elephant dance), Mbwaya, and Nganya. The Bakweri are Bantu in language and origin. More narrowly, they fall into
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2720-437: The Bakweri today grow up with Pidgin as a more widely spoken language. The Bakweri also used a drum language to convey news from clan to clan, and they also utilized a horn language peculiar to them. Bakweri inheritance is patrilineal ; upon the father's death, his property is inherited by his eldest son. The Bakweri have traditionally practised polygamy, although with Christianisation, this custom has become extremely rare. In
2805-867: The Bronx County Historical Society. Its goal was to document the histories of black working- and middle-class residents of the South Bronx neighborhood of Morrisania in New York City since the 1940s. Katharina Lange studied the tribal histories of Syria . The oral histories in this area could not be transposed into tangible, written form due to their positionalities, which Lange describes as "taking sides". The positionality of oral history could lead to conflict and tension. The tribal histories are typically narrated by men. While histories are also told by women, they are not accepted locally as "real history". Oral histories often detail
2890-541: The Cameroonian coast in 1472. Over the next few decades, more adventurers came to explore the estuary and the rivers that feed it, and to establish trading posts . The Bakweri provided materials to the coastal tribes, who acted as middlemen. Germany signed a protectorate agreement with the douala in today Cameroons in 1884. In 1891, the Gbea Bakweri clan rose up in support of their traditional justice system when
2975-943: The Creating Emerging Markets project, which "explores the evolution of business leadership in Africa, Asia, and Latin America throughout recent decades" through oral history. "At its core are interviews, many on video, by the School's faculty with leaders or former leaders of firms and NGOs who have had a major impact on their societies and enterprises across three continents." There are now numerous national organizations and an International Oral History Association , which hold workshops and conferences and publish newsletters and journals devoted to oral history theory and practices. Specialized collections of oral history sometimes have archives of widespread global interest; an example
3060-614: The Germans as plantations and now managed by the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC). The Bakweri today are divided into the urban and rural. Those who live in the cities such as Limbe and Buea earn a living at a number of skilled and unskilled professions. The rural Bakweri, in contrast, work as farmers, making use of Mount Cameroon's fertile volcanic soils to cultivate cocoyams , maize , manioc , oil palms , and plantains . Traditional Bakweri society
3145-485: The Germans forbade them to use a trial by ordeal involving poison to determine whether a recent Christian convert was in fact a witch. This revolt was squelched with the razing of Buea in December 1894 and the death of Chief Kuv'a Likenye . The Germans initially ruled from Douala , which they called Kamerunstadt, but they moved their capital to the Bakweri settlement of Buea in 1901. The colonials' primary activity
3230-716: The Sawa, or the coastal peoples of Cameroon. Oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews . These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to
3315-604: The Study of Totalitarian Regimes . Their oral history project Memory of Nation was created in 2008 and interviews are archived online for user access. As of January 2015, the project has more than 2100 published witness accounts in several languages, with more than 24,000 pictures. Other projects, including articles and books have been funded by the Czech Science Foundation (AV ČR) including: These publications aim to demonstrate that oral history contributes to
3400-730: The Victorian Community History Awards held annually to recognise the contributions made by Victorians in the preservation of the state's history, published during the previous year. In 1948, Allan Nevins , a Columbia University historian, established the Columbia Oral History Research Office, now known as the Columbia Center for Oral History Research , with a mission of recording, transcribing, and preserving oral history interviews. The Regional Oral History Office
3485-427: The accessibility of tape recorders in the 1960s and 1970s led to oral documentation of the era's movements and protests. Following this, oral history has increasingly become a respected record type. Some oral historians now also account for the subjective memories of interviewees due to the research of Italian historian Alessandro Portelli and his associates. Oral histories are also used in many communities to document
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3570-594: The agency as the Astrobiology Program, and to collect the oral histories of women in NASA . Contemporary oral history involves recording or transcribing eyewitness accounts of historical events. Some anthropologists started collecting recordings (at first especially of Native American folklore ) on phonograph cylinders in the late 19th century. In the 1930s, the Federal Writers' Project —part of
3655-459: The attaining of the " informed consent " of those being interviewed. Usually this is achieved through a deed of gift , which also establishes copyright ownership that is critical for publication and archival preservation. Oral historians generally prefer to ask open-ended questions and avoid leading questions that encourage people to say what they think the interviewer wants them to say. Some interviews are "life reviews", conducted with people at
3740-934: The complexity of the issues. The nature of memories is as much a part of the practice of oral history as are the stories collected. Xanthosoma Xanthosoma is a genus of flowering plants in the arum family, Araceae . The genus is native to tropical America but widely cultivated and naturalized in other tropical regions. Several are grown for their starchy corms , an important food staple of tropical regions, known variously as malanga , otoy , otoe , cocoyam (or new cocoyam), tannia , tannier , yautía , macabo , ocumo , macal , taioba , dasheen , quequisque , ʻape and (in Papua New Guinea ) as Singapore taro ( taro kongkong ). Many other species, including especially Xanthosoma roseum , are used as ornamental plants ; in popular horticultural literature these species may be known as ‘ape due to resemblance to
3825-668: The construction of history. As of 2015 , since the government-run historiography in modern Belarus almost fully excludes repression during the epoch when Belarus was part of the Soviet Union , only private initiatives cover the oral memories of the Belarusians. Citizens' groups in Belarus use the methods of oral history and record narrative interviews on video; the Virtual Museum of Soviet Repression in Belarus presents
3910-404: The end of their careers. Other interviews focus on a specific period or a specific event in people's lives, such as in the case of war veterans or survivors of a hurricane. Feldstein (2004) considers oral history to be akin to journalism, Both are committed to uncovering truths and compiling narratives about people, places, and events. Felstein says each could benefit from adopting techniques from
3995-443: The event of failure of the much preferred taro ( kalo ) crop. After having been introduced to Hawaii in the 1920s from South America, Xanthosoma has naturalized and has become more common than A. macrorrhizos , and has been given the same name, ʻape . The typical Xanthosoma plant has a growing cycle of 9 to 11 months, during which time it produces a large stem called a corm , this surrounded by smaller edible cormels about
4080-407: The evolution of a major federal agency. The collection consists primarily of oral histories conducted by scholars working on books about the agency. Since 1996, it has included oral histories of senior NASA administrators and officials, astronauts, and project managers, part of a broader project to document the lives of key agents. Launius emphasizes efforts to include such less-well-known groups within
4165-459: The experiences of survivors of tragedies. Following the Holocaust , there has emerged a rich tradition of oral history, particularly of Jewish survivors. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has an extensive archive of over 70,000 oral history interviews. There are also several organizations dedicated specifically to collecting and preserving oral histories of survivors. Oral history as
4250-744: The indigenes. Land expropriation was another problem, faced particularly in 1946. A Bakwerian, Dr. E. M. L. Endeley was the first Prime Minister of the British Southern Cameroons from 1954–1959. He led other Southern Cameroonian parliamentarians to secede from the Nigerian Eastern House of Assembly in 1954. The Bakweri are primarily concentrated in Cameroon's Southwest Province . They live in over 100 villages east and southeast of Mount Cameroon with Buea their main population centre. Bakweri settlements largely lie in
4335-534: The influence of his wife or wives. The wives tended his pigs, goats, cattle, arable land, so no one could trespass or exceed them, etc. The Bakweri have been largely Christianised since the 1970s Evangelical denominations dominate, particularly the Baptist church. Nevertheless, remnants of a pre-Christian ancestor worship persist. might be expected for coastal peoples, the sea also plays an important role in this faith. Traditional festivals held each year serve as
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#17327757486124420-478: The infructescence is mature, in some species, it arches back and downwards. In other species, it stays erect. Then, the tissue of the spathe tube rolls outwards, exhibiting the bright orange fruits and the velvety pink inner spathe surface. The following species are accepted: The name is derived from the Greek words ξανθός ( xanthos ), meaning 'yellow', and σῶμα ( soma ), meaning 'body'. It refers to
4505-557: The largest collections of oral history on the Pacific Coast. In addition to political figures and prominent businessmen, the Oregon Historical Society has done interviews with minorities, women, farmers, and other ordinary citizens, who have contributed extraordinary stories reflecting the state's cultural and social heritage. Hill (2004) encourages oral history projects in high school courses. She demonstrates
4590-458: The leaves of Colocasia , those of Xanthosoma are usually not peltate- the upper v-notch extends into the point of attachment of the leaf petiole to the blade. The inflorescence in Xanthosoma is composed of a spadix with pistillate flowers at the base, a belt of sterile flowers offered as a reward for pollinators in the middle and staminate flowers on the upper part. Prior to opening,
4675-432: The lives and feats of ancestors. Genealogy is a prominent subject in the area. According to Lange, the oral historians often tell their own personalized genealogies to demonstrate their credibility, both in their social standing and their expertise in the field. Oral sources have established themselves as a vital, diverse, and adaptable source of information for the study of Palestinian history. Researchers benefited from
4760-519: The material contributions of oral studies to studies examining a wide range of topics, including folktales, food and clothing , linguistics and toponymy , genealogy , agricultural activities, and religious cult . Furthermore, due to the dearth of extant indigenous documentation , oral histories continue to play a crucial role in Palestinian academics' continuous efforts to narrate significant moments in Palestine's history. Researchers engaged in
4845-842: The method. Because of repression in Francoist Spain (1939–75), the development of oral history in Spain was quite limited until the 1970s. It became well-developed in the early 1980s, and often had a focus on the Civil War years (1936–39), especially regarding the ones who lost the war and whose stories had been suppressed. At the University of Barcelona, Professor Mercedes Vilanova was a leading scholar, who combined oral history with her interest in quantification and social history. Barcelona scholars sought to integrate oral sources with traditional written sources to create mainstream, not ghettoized, historical interpretations. They sought to give
4930-404: The most visible expression of these traditional beliefs in modern times. The Bakweri still practice arts and crafts handed down for generations. The Bakweri are known to be skilled weavers of hats and shirts, for example. They also construct armoires, chairs, and tables. The greatest venue for Bakweri music and dance are the two major festivals that take place each year in December. The Ngondo
5015-549: The mountain's foothills and continue up its slopes as high as 4,000 metres. They have further villages along the Mungo River and the creeks that feed into it. The town of Limbe is a mixture of Bakweri, Duala, and other ethnic groups. There is an ongoing dispute between the Bakweri Land Claims Committee (BLCC) and the government of Cameroon regarding the disposition of Bakweri Lands formerly used by
5100-504: The other. Journalism could benefit by emulating the exhaustive and nuanced research methodologies used by oral historians. The practice of oral historians could be enhanced by utilizing the more sophisticated interviewing techniques employed by journalists, in particular, the use of adversarial encounters as a tactic for obtaining information from a respondent. The first oral history archives focused on interviews with prominent politicians, diplomats, military officers, and business leaders. By
5185-406: The pistillate flowers as they feed on the sterile area of the spadix. On the second night, they come out of the tube and walk over the staminate flowers, getting covered with pollen, and then flying to a recently opened inflorescence nearby. (Garcia-Robledo et al. ( 2004 , 2005a , 2005b )). Fruit maturation takes several months. Fruits start to develop within the shelter of the spathe tube. When
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#17327757486125270-400: The pistillate phase that attracts pollinators on the night it opens, to a staminate phase on the second night, when pollen is shed. When the inflorescence opens, it produces heat and releases a sweet scent attracting its pollinators, dynastine beetles ( Cyclocephala spp.). Dynastines arrive covered with pollen from another inflorescence and remain in the spathe tube for 24 hours, pollinating
5355-404: The plantations. Individuals could opt to pay a fine to avoid the labour, however, which led to a dearth of workers from the wealthier areas. The British thus renewed encouragement for people from the interior to move to the coast and work the plantations. Many Igbo from Nigeria entered the area, and the newcomers grew numerically and economically dominant over time. This led to ethnic tensions with
5440-519: The process, they founded numerous villages, usually when individual families groups split off. A rival Bakweri tradition says they descend from Mokuri or Mokule, a brother of the Duala's forebear Ewale , who migrated to the Mount Cameroon area for hunting. In addition, a few isolated villages, such as Maumu and Bojongo, claim some alternate descent and may represent earlier groups whom the expanding Bakweri absorbed. Portuguese traders reached
5525-580: The role scientists played in shaping US policy after World War II. Interviews furthermore can provide road maps for researching archives, and can even serve as a fail-safe resource when written documents have been lost or destroyed. Roger D. Launius (2003) shows the huge size and complexity of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) oral history program since 1959. NASA systematically documented its operations through oral histories. They can help to explore broader issues regarding
5610-483: The size of potatoes . These cormels (like the corm) are rich in starch. Their taste has been described as earthy and nutty, and they are a common ingredient in soups and stews. They may also be eaten grilled , fried , or puréed . The young, unfurled leaves of some varieties can be eaten as boiled leafy vegetables or used in soups and stews , such as the Caribbean callaloo . Flour made from Xanthosoma species
5695-402: The stigma or yellow inner tissues. Domestication of Xanthosoma species (especially X. sagittifolium but also X. atrovirens , X. violaceum , X. maffaffa and others) is thought to have originated in northern lowland South America , then spread to the Antilles and Mesoamerica . Today, Xanthosoma is still grown in all those regions, but is especially popular in Cuba ,
5780-457: The stories of Indigenous Australians and others involved in or affected by the child removals resulting in the Stolen Generations . Other contributors included missionaries , police and government administrators. There are now many organisations and projects all over Australia involved in recording oral histories from Australians of all ethnicities and in all walks of life. Oral History Victoria support an annual Oral history award as part of
5865-441: The study of oral tradition or traditional oral history due to the source receiving the information aurally. It is believed that the term oral history originates with Joe Gould , a homeless man living in New York City who solicited donations by claiming that he was working on a massive manuscript called "An Oral History of Our Time", which he said consisted of thousands of recorded conversations on various topics. Although he
5950-406: The traditional Bakweri society, women are chosen as future spouses when they are still children, and in some cases, even before they were born. The father or relative of the woman have been paid a dowry, thus the woman is considered as a property to the husband and his family. Upon the husband's death, the eldest surviving brother inherits the wife. A husband's prosperity was also intricately linked to
6035-446: The true Polynesian ʻape, Alocasia macrorrhizos , or as elephant ear from visual resemblance of the leaf to an elephant 's ear. Sometimes the latter name is also applied to members in the closely related genera Caladium , Colocasia ( taro ), and Alocasia . The leaves of most Xanthosoma species are 40–200 centimetres (16–79 inches) long, sagittate (arrowhead-shaped) or subdivided into three or as many as 18 segments. Unlike
6120-558: The understanding of human lives and history itself, such as the motives behind the dissidents' activities, the formation of opposition groups, communication between dissidents and state representatives and the emergence of ex-communist elites and their decision-making processes. Oral history centers in the Czech Republic emphasize educational activities (seminars, lectures, conferences), archiving and maintaining interview collections, and providing consultations to those interested in
6205-525: The use of oral interviews by scholars as primary sources, He lists major oral history projects in the history of science begun after 1950. Oral histories, he concludes, can augment the biographies of scientists and help spotlight how their social origins influenced their research. Doel acknowledges the common concerns historians have regarding the validity of oral history accounts. He identifies studies that used oral histories successfully to provide critical and unique insight into otherwise obscure subjects, such as
6290-499: The viability of oral history since the new modes of transmission allowed history to get off archival shelves and reach the larger community. Oral historians in different countries have approached the collection, analysis, and dissemination of oral history in different modes. There are many ways of creating and studying oral histories even within individual national contexts. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia :,
6375-519: The words and deeds of important historical figures and what really happened during those important historical events, which is similar to common practice in the west, while the others focus more on important people and event, asking important figures to describe the decision making and details of important historical events. In December 2004, the Chinese Association of Oral History Studies was established. The establishment of this institution
6460-708: Was a lecturer at Stanford University in California. The project focuses on interviews with members of the Sikh diaspora in the U.S. and Canada, including the many who migrated after the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India. Hazel de Berg began recording Australian writers, artists, musicians and others in the Arts community in 1957. She conducted nearly 1300 interviews. Together with the National Library of Australia , she
6545-824: Was a pioneer in the field in Australia, working together for twenty-seven years. In December 1997, in response to the first recommendation of the Bringing Them Home : Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families report, the Australian Government announced funding for the National Library to develop and manage an oral history project. The Bringing Them Home Oral History Project (1998–2002) collected and preserved
6630-479: Was divided into three strata. At the top were the native Bakweri, with full rights of land ownership. The next tier consisted either non-Bakweri or the descendants of slaves. Finally, the slaves made up the bottom rung. Chiefs and headmen sat at the pinnacle of this hierarchy in the past, though today such figures have very little power in their own right. Councils of elders and secret societies allow communities to decide important issues. The Bakweri speak Mokpwe ,
6715-448: Was established with the aim of "systematically support the development of oral history methodology and its application in historical research". In 2001, Post Bellum , a nonprofit organization, was established to "documents the memories of witnesses of the important historical phenomenons of the 20th century" within the Czech Republic and surrounding European countries. Post Bellum works in partnership with Czech Radio and Institute for
6800-608: Was founded in 1954 as a division of the University of California, Berkeley's Bancroft Library . In 1967, American oral historians founded the Oral History Association , and British oral historians founded the Oral History Society in 1969. In 1981, Mansel G. Blackford , a business historian at Ohio State University , argued that oral history was a useful tool to write the history of corporate mergers. More recently, Harvard Business School launched
6885-584: Was founded in 2010 by Guneeta Singe Bhalla, a physicist in Berkeley, California, who began conducting and recording interviews "to collect and preserve the stories of those who lived through this tumultuous time, to make sure this great human tragedy isn't forgotten". [1] The Sikh Diaspora Project was founded in 2014 by Brajesh Samarth, senior lecturer in Hindi-Urdu at Emory University in Atlanta, when he
6970-531: Was known to have a history of mental illness and violence, Gould was beloved by some writers in Greenwich Village , including Ezra Pound and E. E. Cummings . His writing, supposedly excerpts from this "Oral History", was published in elite literary magazines, and he was eventually profiled in The New Yorker . Oral history has become an international movement in historical research. This
7055-567: Was released for research in 2003. During 1998 and 1999, 40 BBC local radio stations recorded personal oral histories from a broad cross-section of the population for The Century Speaks series. The result was 640 half-hour radio documentaries, broadcast in the final weeks of the millennium, and one of the largest single oral history collections in Europe, the Millennium Memory Bank (MMB). The interview based recordings are held by
7140-546: Was the establishment of banana plantations in the fertile Mount Cameroon region. The Bakweri were impressed to work them, but their recalcitrance and small population led the colonials to encourage peoples from further inland, such as the Bamileke , to move to the coast. In addition, constant shipping traffic along the coast allowed individuals to move from one plantation or town to another in search of work. In 1918, Germany lost World War I , and her colonies became mandates of
7225-557: Was to learn more about life in the 1920s and 1930s to study the impact of the Soviet Union's conquest. 20 interviews each were conducted in the Fergana valley , Tashkent , Bukhara , Khorezm , and Kashkadarya regions. Their interviews uncovered stories of famine and death that had not been widely known outside of local memory in the region. While oral tradition is an integral part of ancient Southeast Asian history, oral history
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