The front cover of How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, edited by Sara Sinclair. The text occupies a translucent orange stripe on the left side of the book, overlaying an image of a signpost pointing to home, erected in fall 2016 by those who came to camp at Standing Rock.

Oral historians have a reverence for the power of the stories that are shared with us. As practitioners, we also aim to pursue our work through processes that empower our narrators and their larger communities. This workshop with How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America editor Sara Sinclair and curriculum specialist Suzanne Methot will explore how oral history can form the foundation of educational materials designed to challenge oppressive power dynamics. We will explore how the book’s narratives and accompanying curriculum can return the power of the stories to Indigenous youth through teaching materials that are designed to amplify Indigenous voices and embrace Indigenous determinants of educational success.  

Suzanne Methot is the author of the non-fiction book Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing, co-author of the Grade 11 textbook Aboriginal Beliefs, Values, and Aspirations, and a contributor to Scholastic’s Take Action series of elementary classroom resource books. She is a social historian and speaker on human rights, pedagogy, Indigenous literatures, Indigenous worldviews, Indigenous approaches to health and wellness, trauma- and healing-informed practice, and decolonization. She also designs programs and facilitates change-making sessions for the education, health care, environmental, and museum sectors. Suzanne is Asiniwachi Nehiyaw (Rocky Mountain Cree) of mixed Indigenous and European heritage.

Sara Sinclair is an oral historian, writer, and educator of Cree-Ojibwe and settler descent. Sara teaches in the Oral History Masters Program at Columbia University. She has contributed to the Columbia Center for Oral History Research’s Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, Obama Presidency Oral History, and Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project. She has conducted oral histories for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and the International Labor Organization, among others. Sara is co-editor of Robert Rauschenberg: An Oral History, published with Columbia University Press in 2019.

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These events are open to all. For more information or if we can make any of these events more accessible to you please contact Rebecca McGilveray at rlm2203@columbia.edu.