By looking at many different research sources, learners come to understand that the different opinions expressed in historical sources come from people with different perspectives and backgrounds. Literacy group members learn to compare, analyze and think critically about the material they see, hear and read. They learn that their viewpoints are just as valuable and just as legitimate as the views they read in a book or see expressed in a video.
Start the History Workshop by discussing and recording what you, as a group, already know about a topic and then ask what people would like to know. Keep the list of questions and let them guide your research throughout the project. You will answer some of the questions and probably add more questions as you learn more.
A History Workshop, like an oral history project, relies on learning from firsthand sources, not only from history textbooks. Firsthand sources are hose created by eyewitnesses or participants in an event. They include written sources such as journals, personal letters, correspondence from official sources or ship’s logs. But they also include oral stories, artifacts, visual images (photos, maps, drawings), recordings and living people.
Try to provide learners with a variety of different sources that come from different perspectives, so they can see the issues from different viewpoints Most of the written pieces should be short – one or two pages or less.
For example, if you were studying a relocation that happened near your community in the 1950’s, you might find information in the book, Tammarniit: Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic 1939-63, by Frank James Tester and Peter Kukchyski. This book contains quotes from documents found in many places: The National Archives of Canada, Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, General Synod Archives of the Anglican Church of Canada, the ship’s log of the St. Roch, government documents and reports, the RCMP Quarterly Magazine and Beaver Magazine. You could read the quotes from these sources in Tammarniit or request complete copies of the documents yourselves. Tammarniit is a book that is critical of government decisions made during this period and is sympathetic to the position of the Inuit at the time. Another book, Arctic Smoke and Mirrors by Gerard Kenney takes the opposite position. Both these books are written at a high reading level, but working together on short passages learners will understand the concepts, even if they can’t read the passages word for word. It could be interesting to compare the perspectives in both books, as well as comparing information from the books with stories from local people.
When learners read a firsthand document they could answer questions like these: