Tag Archives: community history

Project Showcase: Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac

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kouchibouguac-imageIn 1969 the Canadian and New Brunswick governments agreed to create Kouchibouguac National Park along the east coast of this Atlantic province. At the time, establishment of a national park required removing the people who resided there, in the belief that nature should be exhibited to visitors without signs of any human presence. Over 1200 individuals were uprooted, having been told that their lives were worthless and that they could only be helped by being forced to move.

But government officials had not taken into account how this particular case of forced removal would be viewed by the residents, most of whom were Acadians, a people with a strong memory of having been deported by the British in the mid-18th century. There was large-scale resistance that resulted in the park being shut down on several occasions.

And the leader of the resistance, Jackie Vautour, remains a squatter on his land to this day.

The Kouchibouguac story of removal and resistance has provided a source of inspiration for Acadian artists working in a variety of genres. But the story of resistance only tells part of what happened at Kouchibouguac, because most families simply and quietly left their lands to create new lives, often within kilometres of the borders of the park. Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park tells a wide range of stories inspired by the experiences of the residents.

The central feature of the site is the presentation of 26 video portraits drawn from interviews with former residents, who often told their stories while standing on the lands where they once lived. (One of these videos has been embedded below.) Visitors are encouraged to interact with the map that was created at the time of the expropriation to facilitate the process. Here, however, the map has been subverted to serve as a navigational device to return the voices of the residents to their lands.

The residents who were removed to allow the creation of Kouchibouguac National Park can never return to their lands, but this project makes it possible for some of their voices to return, if only virtually.

~ Ronald Rudin, Concordia University

2013 G. Wesley Johnson Award: How public history matters for undergraduates

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woman looking at exhibit

Oral History quotes and a video of historic images were juxtaposed with negative press clippings in the “I’m Not Who You Think I Am” section of the 2010 exhibit which examined questions of identity and perception within the Cape Verdean community. Photograph courtesy of the author.

Editors’ Note: This series showcases the winners of the National Council on Public History’s annual awards for the best new work in the field. Today’s post is by Elizabeth Belanger, author of “Public History and Liberal Learning: Making the Case for the Undergraduate Practicum Experience,” which won the 2013 G. Wesley Johnson Award for the best article published in The Public Historian in the previous calendar year.

In the winter of 2011, American Historical Association President Anthony Grafton declared that “history is under attack.”[1]   In the year leading up to his presidential address, history institutions like the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services had seen their funding reduced.  In academia, history faculty members bowed under the increasing weight of a national assessment movement that required them demonstrate student learning outcomes in the major.  Across the board, in academia and outside, critics challenged the usefulness or even purpose of professional historians.

Those of us in public history would like to think that we are not intended targets of many of those criticisms.  Our graduates are not groomed only for the academy, but rather educated to work in a number of career fields including archives, historic resource management, K-12 education, and museums, to name a few.  We don’t expect that our scholars will be sequestered in ivory towers, but rather will work directly with members of the public, engaging them in important investigations of our past.  But those expectations for those in the world of undergraduate public history may not be borne out as we would hope.  My experiences with undergraduates suggest that only a few of the undergraduates who take public history courses go on to get advanced degrees in the discipline. For some of these students, the public history curriculum might consist of a single elective course, “Introduction to Public History,” which counts for their history major.  Larger colleges and universities might have a public history track within the history major, but only a small percentage offer degrees in public history.  If only a few of our students who take a public history class go on to work in the field, how do we justify public history in undergraduate programs? Continue reading →

Project Showcase: Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey Online

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typed index cardThe Newberry Library’s Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture is pleased to announce the release of a new historical web resource, the Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey, a collection of translations of approximately 50,000 newspaper articles originally published in Chicago’s ethnic press between the 1860s and the 1930s. The articles from 22 ethnic groups were originally translated during the 1930s as a project of the U.S. Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The 1930s project intended to offer English-speaking researchers and students access to primary materials on ethnicity and urban life in one of America’s great polyglot cities during a formative span of its history. In subsequent decades the Survey has been invaluable to scholars and students of Chicago history, and it has been used effectively in high school and college classrooms.

The new digital collection, made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, provides broader and better organized access than has been possible with paper and microfilm. The Survey translations have considerable value for teaching and research in immigration studies, urban and local history, modernist and comparative literary studies, the history of popular culture, and many other fields. They can reward browsing for curiosity as well as targeted research.

Please direct all inquiries to the Newberry’s Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture, scholl@newberry.org.

~ Anne Flannery, Assistant Director of Digital Initiatives and Services, Newberry Library

Image:  WPA index card with typed translation of undated Chicago Tribune article on “Our Polish Citizens.”