Intro:  How do you engage in a dialogue with a narrator who lives permanently in an institution?   Let me tell you a story.

My high school choir in Tokyo made annual trips to a leprosarium, a residential institution that houses patients needing treatment for leprosy.  In recent decades, leprosy has become curable, but during the time of our visit, many patients already had advanced symptoms that had resulted in the deterioration of the soft tissues around their eyes, nose, mouth, ears and fingers.

Upon arrival, when we got off the bus, we were taken by the beauty of the landscape and the serenity that embraced the facility.  Crisp air.  Mountains with bamboo forest.  Mt. Fuji in the distance.  Walking through the door into the facility, we immediately faced a calligraphy that read: 神を待つ, which translates to “Waiting for God.”

After a tour of the facility, which included a pristine chapel, the girls sang.  I had sometimes wondered if our presence was of any value to the residents.  When we finished our last song, one of the patients asked about a student who sang a solo in the previous year.  “She graduated so she is no longer with us.”  They were disappointed but recalled with joy her angelic voice.  That’s when I thought perhaps our visits were not in vain. 

These residents lived permanently at this facility, just like the narrators with intellectual disability at Selinsgrove Center in Pennsylvania who Nicki Pombier and Lisa Sonneborn interviewed.  While the specific challenges and geographical locations of these residents differed, they shared similar experiences such as social isolation. Nicki and Lisa shared the unique challenges and joy of engaging with these institutionalized narrators at the OHMA Workshop, “Art, Oral History, and New Approaches to Telling the “Story” of Institutionalization in Pennsylvania.” 

As I study oral history, one feature that strikes me is that there is no single definitive way to engage with the narrators.  What worked for Allan Nevins in interviewing elites in 1948 had to be modified to conduct the approximately 200 interviews in Alessandro Portelli’s seminal work, “The Order Has Been Carried Out.”[1]  As oral historians engaged with narrators whose voices were not heard much in public before, they broke new ground in the art and practice of oral history.  Dan Kerr with narrators experiencing homelessness in Ohio[2], Winona Wheeler with indigenous people[3], and now, Nicki Pombier and Lisa Sonneborn.  They “tossed the oral history tools as we have known them” and developed “a radically inclusive practice” to bring out the stories of institutionalized narrators with intellectual disability.

When Nicki and Lisa found their narrators not opening up during the interview, they abandoned the practice of recording the interview one-on-one in a noise-controlled environment. Instead, Nicki and Lisa asked the narrators to take them to locations of their choice.  These locations were often in noisy places with other people.  However, what Nicki and Lisa gave up in eliminating extraneous noise in their recording was well compensated by the narrators opening up and sharing their stories. 

As I listened to their interviews, one thing that struck me was their love and respect for the narrators.  I could practically hear their warm embrace.  While studying the methodology and theory of oral history is important, Nicki and Lisa reminded me that oral history requires heart. 

After the choir performance, as the leader of the social service council of my high school responsible for the trip, I asked my fellow students to take 20 minutes to talk with the residents.  They were eager to get home so were not happy to extend the trip.  However, what I really wanted to do was to enable a Korean patient to talk with our Korean student.  I surmised that this was a rare opportunity for that patient, far from home, to converse in her native language.  By the time we boarded the bus to leave, all the students had peaceful expressions on their faces and were happy with the interaction.  Talking with the residents transformed the audience members into individuals with names and voices.  The students really enjoyed getting to know them. I could only hope that the patients also enjoyed the time with the students. 

I wish now that I had been able to arm the students with some skills from oral history as that could have further enhanced our collective experience.  I learned that day that dialogues could bring joy and peace to people, but only upon studying oral history as a discipline have I learned that the experience could potentially be much more than that.  Of course, given the unique circumstance of the leprosarium residents, including cultural and generational inclination to keep initial conversations polite, the dialogues possibly could have been limited in depth.  One comforting thought is that these schoolmates of mine possessed the most important quality for oral history interviews that Nicki and Lisa had demonstrated: love and respect for the narrators. 

So, for those of you who have the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with residents of an institution, here are a few tips from Nicki Pombier: 

1.     Take time

2.     Presume ability

3.     Embrace uncertainty

Here’s Nicki sharing her thoughts on these three points:

I plan to apply these three lessons in my future oral history interviews with residents in institutionalized settings.  Also, if the narrator does not open up, I plan to adapt Nicki's solution by asking that person to take me to a location of their choice.  In the leprosarium, it is possible that the resident may take me to the chapel where one feels safe and peaceful.  I thank Nicki for teaching me to engage in “a radically inclusive practice” with flexibility and deep empathy.   

For additional trainings and inspiring practices on oral history, I encourage you to sign up for notification on upcoming programs at Columbia University’s Oral History Masters Program: http://oralhistory.columbia.edu

[1] Portelli, Alessandro, The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003

[2] Kerr, Daniel. “‘We Know What the Problem Is’: Using Oral History to Develop a Collaborative Analysis of Homelessness from the Bottom up.” Oral History Review 30.1 (2003): 27-4

[3] Wheeler, Winona: “Reflections on the Social Relations of Indigenous Oral History,” in Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and Their Representations, ed. David T. McNab. Waterloo, Wilfred Laurer University Press. Aboriginal Studies Series, 2005

Sach Takayasu is a student at Columbia University’s Oral History Master of Arts Program [http://oralhistory.columbia.edu/why-ohma] and a Fellow at Columbia University’s Obama Presidency Oral History Project [https://obamaoralhistory.columbia.edu]