Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes (eds), Oral Histories and Public Memories.(Book review)

Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes (eds), Oral Histories and Public Memories, Templeton University Press, Philadelphia, 2008, xvii + 302 pages; ISBN 978 1 59213 140 2.

Multi-authored books challenge readers to grapple with several different mind-sets. This volume draws on 14 contributors dealing with material from Australia, Colombia, Greece, Kosovo, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the United States. Further, the editors have been generous in placing few restrictions on the contributors. Nevertheless, Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes have presented a group of thoughtful articles that work together to demonstrate ways in which oral history is used to reflect and shape group or public memory.

The editors are keen to show how representations of the past gathered in oral history evidence can be used to redefine understandings of aspects of the past. They pursue links between oral history, which is often individual based, and memory studies that query national, community and group representations of the past, frequently in memorials, monuments, places or rituals.

The book is divided into three parts. The first, 'Creating Heritage', shows the contribution oral history can make in constructing officially sanctioned memory history or memory places. David Neufeld explains how Parks Canada engaged with First Nations groups to include native perspectives in written and illustrated interpretations of the gold rush routes. But there was no simple incorporation of native perspectives into what Parks Canada soon realised was basically Eurocentric. Instead there seemed to be two parallel narratives each within a different overall framework. The oral testimony proved to be more than a mere supplement to the authorised accounts of the development of Canada.

Maria Nugent tells of a similar attempt by NSW National Parks and Wildlife to include Aboriginal perspectives of post-contact history on the mid-North Coast. In her search for place associations, she found a way forward with mental maps illustrating landscapes and life stories in the Taree-Purfleet-Forster area. The map memories revealed that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples had both shared and separate routes and places. Places were embedded differently in life stories. There was a 'this and not that' side of the river for Aboriginal people. Similarly she quotes one observer who tells that the very front downstairs rows in the Taree cinema were designated for Aboriginal use. The cinema-going audience accepted the divide, and it has been embedded in life stories. These understandings of place segregation widen our understandings of the social life of a country town within living memory.

Selma Thomas, a filmmaker, moves the argument from landscape-based representations of the past to the museum. She explains how she went about deciding on stories and their presentation for a museum exhibition about a Japanese internment in the US during World War II which would evoke painful recollections. Using her skills as a filmmaker and exhibition designer she drew on the spoken word, music, images and objects to impart the immediacy and intensity of first-hand witness accounts. One of the most effective ways of engaging museum visitors involved the relatively simple but powerful device of curating a video ...