Participating in an oral history project makes history come alive; it allows people to see that we are all makers of history. But the oral history project is also an opportunity to link your interviews and other research to the big picture historically, to allow the literacy group to see how events in the north, in Canada and in the world affected the lives of their ancestors and the people they interviewed. In turn, people’s lives today have been affected.

You might ask questions like these to help the literacy group make links to the big historical picture:

• How do the stories we heard it together? About what date did they happen? Which happened first, second, third?
• How do interviews on different themes link together?
• How does our oral history project relate to other oral history projects that have been done?
• What was happening in the rest of Canada and in Europe at the time of the stories we heard?
• What Canadian government policies affected the stories we’ve heard?
• How has the information we learned from our oral history project affected us and our lives today?

Your oral history project is also an opportunity for the literacy group to see the connection between the ‘real world’ and books. There are many books written about the north that offer different perspectives on an historical issue or event. Many of these books are in English and some are written at quite a high reading level. But you will be able to use selected passages from northern books to gain insight on the different factors that were at work in the time and place you have been studying.