On March 11, Gabriel Solis visited OHMA to share and present his work as the executive director of the Texas After Violence Project (TAVP). TAVP is a community based archive dealing in critical memory work, recording and mobilizing the stories of Texas residents whose lives have been impacted by violence in Texas—namely murder, police violence, in-custody deaths, mass incarceration and the death penalty. 

We were interested to learn more about trauma-informed interviewing, pedagogical and project design approaches to community-based oral histories, and the role of archives in oral histories meant to create social change.

On April 12, Kae Bara Kratcha and Taylor Thompson met back up with Gabriel Solis, to follow up on Solis’ presentation and to learn more about his ideas concerning teaching towards trauma informed care and oral history methodology. The following is an abridged interview with him. 

Kae

We wanted to open by asking you just what was it like to be interviewed and then to present at OHMA? 

Gabriel

Well, as you know, I have a close relationship with the program, not so much the OHMA program, but the Center for Oral History. I worked there when I was young, you know, in my early twenties. It was early in my career. I was just sort of learning how to do this work, and being able to work with people like Mary Marshall and Amy and so many other people who came through the center at that time. It was really formative for me. I've been invited back almost every year, whether it's speaking to an OHMA class or teaching at the Summer Institute, which was really nice. And then just being in that community has helped me a lot. And even now, Mary Marshall still graciously reaches out and wants to get me involved with stuff; she just invited me to present with her at the Oral History Association conference about our work on Guantanamo. And, you know, I'll basically do anything she asks. I mean, she's such a close friend, and just such a nice and thoughtful person. And her approach to the work has been a major inspiration to how we’ve done our work at TAVP over the years. Some of her writings, and particularly her and others’ work on the 9/11 project all those years ago—has been pretty formative.

Gabriel

And then I am always interested to meet students. I don't have any formal formal training in oral history. I don't have a degree in oral history. Not for any reason other than I just sort of did the work and then never had time to even think about a degree. So I'm super interested to see what other people are doing with oral history work, and always blown away by the work that some of the OHMA students have been doing over the years, you know, I check in occasionally on the website and on the blog, and I'm just totally blown away. And I get inspiration from that, too, because we're always trying to think about how to push our work forward in interesting ways, especially the activation piece of it. So like, what do we do with these materials? What do you do with these stories? And for us, it's all about transformative justice and abolition. And so we're really trying hard to think about how we bring all those things together. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I was happy to be back and happy to meet people like y'all, you know, because I feel like the people who are drawn to oral history are always very, you know, compassionate and creative, and people who truly have a sense of not only history, but recognizing the importance of disrupting historical narratives. So yeah, I'm always happy to linger around the Columbia oral history community, whether I'm invited or not.

Kae

Well, you had a question, Taylor, about kind of—what is a community based archival project? Which I think is an interesting question.

Gabriel

Yeah

Kae

Like what makes something community based?

Gabriel

I think people will have different definitions of that. Community for TAVP isn't defined by geographical boundaries, or cultural, ethnic, racial boundaries. Like, say, the South Asian American Digital Archive, which is a community archive in Philadelphia but works nationally around South Asian American culture and history. TAVP doesn't have that. Our community is people whose lives have been devastated by violence, specifically state violence. So our communities are formerly incarcerated people, or the loved ones of people who are incarcerated, or the loved ones of people who've been killed by police, the loved ones of people who've been executed. It's a really tragic sort of community definition.

Gabriel

But what makes our work community based—and I think this is sort of answering your question a little bit indirectly—is not just the juxtaposition against institutional archives or institutional oral history projects, in which there are significant juxtapositions between the two, but how we do our work. So, as I said in the Columbia talk a few weeks ago, increasingly we're embracing the necessity of having community members at the center of our work, from beginning to end, and we've been moving more and more that way. And so to me, that's what makes it community based is not just a sort of outward focus on community issues and community stories, but also an inward process where the community members have real power and decision making. Throughout the projects, and again, not just the oral history piece and the archiving piece, but also how the materials are accessed publicly, and how they're used publicly. And who gets to decide, who gets to describe them, etc, etc. So yeah, I think some people will sort of lazily say a community archive is one that's not in an institution, you know, but I don't think that's always entirely true. So I think it's how far you want to go in embracing the community part of community-based archives. If that makes sense.

Taylor

But I did have a question around, you know, we talked a lot in our initial meeting about what it means to like, as you said, go beyond archiving being the end game, and also having some interviews but don't see the archive, that aren't meant for it, and are meant for a series of other, you know, hopefully, like, healing or productive or generative purposes. And I'm just, I'm struggling still to form a question around it. But I just, I really value that kind of conversation and the thoughts that you were able to engender for me. And so yeah, just like, can you speak to something about what it means to think critically about where an oral history should go? And like that being an expansive logic in itself?

Gabriel

Yeah, that's interesting. I tend to be so obsessed over archives because there's the preservation aspect, which is very important, you know, and that's like, the difference between having like a really nice website that has segments of video oral histories that are very well curated, and a beautiful visual presentation, which is very important to do for engaging the public. But that preservation piece is so important as well—especially for an organization like TAVP, where, you know, we have funding this year, we have some funding for next year, but that's really it. It's a very real possibility that we could close down as an organization. I mean, that's how it is in the nonprofit industrial complex in a neoliberal capitalist society. That's just how it is. Just to circle back—this goes back to the institutional partnership—like why do you have an institutional partnership if they're such a headache all the time? It's because of the preservation. It's because knowing that if TAVP ceases to exist, or closes down and re-emerges in some other form, the archival collection will exist in perpetuity. That is very important. Not just for this idea around the future and people in the future using and relying on the archives for whatever reason, but also accessibility for people today to access the materials quickly and safely and securely. So that part is really important.

Gabriel

To your point, Taylor, that some oral histories, for whatever reason, aren't destined for the archive and can be used outside of that, yes, absolutely. We've done oral history type interviews always knowing that they were going to be destroyed once we used them for whatever it was that we were using them for. In that case, it was a report on experiences of family members of people who've been executed or on death row. And it felt unnatural because oral history is almost always coupled with archiving. And so it felt unnatural to decouple that and to say, we are going to destroy this amazing capturing of this person's experience for fear of retaliation from the state. That felt very awkward and unnatural and uncomfortable. And we had to go round and round having conversations about whether that was something we were willing to do. Because, like I said, the inclination is always to preserve, preserve, preserve, and keep safe, and make accessible as widely as possible.

Taylor

Thank you.

Gabriel

Yeah, and that is also related to something I think I said too, about how we've become comfortable just using the best parts of oral history in our work, but actually, maybe not doing oral history, as somebody might, you know, like a purist, might say you're not doing oral history. And I would say to that, Okay. But we're still taking the best that this method has to offer, as you know, traditionally as a method of inquiry, of human inquiry. I mean, that's what it is. And it's really good, it's really effective, which is why it's become what it is, since it's been used in the US since the mid 20th century as a sort of bottom up documentation method. And so yeah, I think again, there are ways where you cherry pick the best from an array of methods, from oral history, to investigative journalism, to, you know, some kind of narrative construction theory or something. You can sort of take from all these traditions and build a tool box of exactly what you need that is best suited to the community or the family or the individual that you're working with.

Kae

One thing we were interested in asking you was, when you are designing an oral history project, and you're involving community members, especially if you're involving community members as interviewers. I don't know how much you do that, but—

Gabriel

Quite a bit.

Kae

Ok, yeah, so how do you think about—do you take a pedagogical approach, and how do you think about training people to interview and how does it impact your project design?

Gabriel

I think it depends on how much time we have, you know, because it isn't a master's program, you know, where we have two years, or however long the master's program is, to do a real deep dive on the history of oral history and how it's been used. And—to use a very academic word—"problematize" this and that. Yeah, that would be great. And you are getting a great education by being able to do that, and fully understand how this method has, you know, woven in and out of American life and culture and history, or global, internationally.

Gabriel

So that's great. We don't have the time to do that, when we're working with a group of formerly incarcerated people who are graciously giving up their Saturdays to come learn about how we do our interviewing. And with one participatory oral history project that we did in 2018, we only had one Saturday afternoon to train them. So it was straight to the point. I might have given like 10 minutes on the history of oral history, just to get people to understand, like, this is how it's been used politically, socially, and all these really interesting ways and movements in the US, although I think I did give some international human rights examples. But really, it's like, okay, this is why the method is important, this is why we are going to be using it for this project. Let's talk about ways to mitigate harm. So I would say the meat of the training was how do we not harm people or yourself in doing this work. I would say that is what we focus on the most. So it'd be like, five minutes on the history, five minutes on project design, maybe like 20 minutes on question development, and then like an hour on, here's little things to look out for when you're asking someone about, you know, physical or psychological or sexual abuse that someone has experienced. You know, is that something you're comfortable talking about? Or asking about? Are you in a place where you can engage with that kind of conversation?

Gabriel

And that's probably the wrong way to do it. I think a lot of people would be like, you shouldn't do that. But these are people who don't have a lot of time or money. And it's a luxury to get them for a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon. And then to try to give them a little stipend for their time, which is what we do. But if they didn't want to be there, they wouldn't be there. They wanted to be there. They wanted to learn how to do this. And they wanted to interview each other about their experiences around incarceration. And the interviews were incredible. I mean, not surprisingly, they were incredible. And way better than if I would have done it with my colleagues who have never experienced incarceration.

Gabriel

So, I guess my response is I wish we could do so much more. I wish we had the resources to take a group of directly impacted people and do a 10 week oral history training, oral history and archives. Every Sunday for 10 weeks, for two hours a week, we're gonna do a full curriculum, and we're gonna pay you all this money. We pay you to come to the training. You don't pay us. Basically like the exact opposite of a lot of these fancy oral history summer schools that I see sometimes being advertised. They're like $5,000 or something. Or $8,000. But again, that serves a specific purpose. There's a specific student they're going for. We're just doing the opposite of that. And I'm sure they're wonderful. I'm sure they're really, really great. And if I could afford it, I'd be curious to go to just see what people are learning and talking about these days in the field. But we're doing the opposite of that. And I'm trying to get grant money to pay directly impacted community members to learn about this method. So pedagogically, that's the best way to do it probably. But realistically with just being a small organization working with this specific community, it's like we get a couple pizzas from Pizza Hut, and we like hit it for a couple hours. It's not ideal, but that's what we're doing. And the result was amazing, the interviews that resulted from that project.

Kae

And I'm wondering if you see—I have lots of questions around like whether you see a skills gap in people who have been formally trained and like a master's program or some sort of for-pay or paid oral history training. And whether those kinds of things in real life, prepare people to do the kind of work that you're doing.

Gabriel

I mean, some of our best interviews, to be perfectly honest, have been people who did that one pizza afternoon training, where I'm like, wow, I'm just totally blown away. You don't need formal training in oral history to be a damn good oral historian. You don’t. You just have to be compassionate, a deep listener, all the things that people—some people—are just born with. And so I mean, honestly, some of the best interviews I've seen have been the people who just did the quick and dirty training, and then over time continuing to work with us have gotten better and better. I've gotten better over the years. Man, some of those early interviews I did are cringe-worthy, when I was like 20 and didn't know what the hell I was doing. But even interviews I did a couple years ago—and sadly I don't really do that many interviews anymore because I'm just bringing in funding—but even interviews I did a couple years ago, I’m always like, man, I should have asked this question this way. I missed an opportunity there. I should have let this silence, you know, allow it to just be instead of stepping all over it because I was uncomfortable. You know what I mean? 

Gabriel

And same with the archives world, too. We do have an archivist on staff, a credentialed archivist. She's amazing. And I'm really glad that we do because she is doing things right now that I could never do, around the digital archiving process. But I still see myself as an archives person. I'm not an archivist, per se. But I am obsessed with building archival collections and activating them. And it's all I really think about now, you know, and I don't have a degree in archives. But I think being part of a team with someone who does, I think that makes for a powerful team, and that we can all come at it from different ways. And I think we do some pretty cool stuff on the archive side as well.

Taylor

Are there things that [readers and listeners] can do to support your work, or to support just generally the movement that you are dedicating your time to in this way

Gabriel

It's a great question. I wish I had a prepared response to that question, because we get asked all the time. And I'm like, “Oh, uh?” I mean, I think what I've said before, is, depending on how angry I am that day about what's happening in the world, the answer is different. I mean, with the news last night, coming out of Minneapolis and then also us trying to like as an organization trying to like, you know, like this morning, we immediately put out resources on social media about how to safely document protests, police protests.

Gabriel

So I would say, you know, in response to that question, do this work in your own communities. Around police violence. Around mass incarceration. Around the death penalty. Around cruel immigration policies. Do the documentation and archiving work, but do it ethically and do it responsibly, and take your time to learn how to do it and then do the work in collaboration with others in your community. We've had conversations with some of our friends across the country who do similar work to ours. And we've talked about the dream of having like rapid response oral historians being able to be dispatched to a community quickly, like someone who could quickly get to Minneapolis and immediately start doing story collecting with family and witnesses and everything. There are problems with that idea. You know, I mean, this is the whole critique of American Western cultural anthropology, you know, to go into someone else's community and start doing this work. I can see, in some cases, why it would be necessary, but maybe the role is more like going in and quickly training community members to do it and then supporting them to do it. But really just trying to, as effectively as we can, we're trying to teach people how we do our work, so that they can mold it to their own needs in their community and do it themselves. I'm not saying we have all the answers. I'm always open with the fact that we don't have all the answers and that we make mistakes ’til this day and are always learning from that. But I just see a need for what TAVP does in every community across this country. I really do. As a direct form of resistance to what we're seeing, particularly in the context of state violence, which is the world that we live in. But also, clearly, as I've seen a lot of OHMA student work on all kinds of issues, you know, and how people are applying this work to their specific passions and interests. So not just in the context of state violence, but in my mind, that's where I go to because that's all I know, sadly. So yeah, I think that would be my response, is, do it. But do it safely, ethically, inclusively. And don't harm people. And, you know, do everything we can to totally transform policing and how we address punishment. Because this is not working. For anybody.

Taylor

As we know.

Gabriel

Yes. This is not working.

Taylor

Yeah. And, and thank you. Yeah, we certainly could have—at the entry point of this interview, you know, brought into the space that we are speaking on a really particularly sad day. I mean, every day is kind of sad, based on our—

Gabriel

It happens every day.

Taylor

—criminal justice system, but this is, you know, a particular loss for, for a beloved community. So—

Gabriel

Yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens the next few days. But you know, like we saw last summer, I mean, that's gonna pop off again, at some point in terms of the uprisings. And yeah, I don't get it. But I also totally get it. You know, like, I also totally know why this is happening. But yeah, we feel powerless against it sometimes. So I think that's why I like our little project, because, you know, we're trying to do something directly about that.

Taylor

Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for sharing with us.

Gabriel

Yeah. Thank you for the invitation.

Thanks again to Gabriel Solis for talking to us about trauma-informed interviewing, community-based interviewing and project design, and his dreams for the method of oral history in the United States. You can find more information about the Texas After Violence Project on their website. You can also access the TAVP trainings on trauma-informed interviewing and watch them for free. If you find the TAVP trainings useful, consider making a donation to the organization to support their future work.

Taylor Thompson (she/hers) is an Oral History Fellow with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project. Taylor is a student at Columbia's Oral History Masters of Arts Program and a recent graduate of Barnard College, where she majored in Economics and Social History. As an undergraduate Taylor wrote her thesis in economics on alternative economic models developed by Black women in Harlem, New York in the early 20th Century.

Kae Bara Kratcha (they/them) is a nonbinary librarian and oral historian on the unceded Lenape land known as Queens, NY.