On Oct 4, 2008, at 9:28 AM, Anne Pemberton wrote:

> Kathleen,
>
> I understand what you are saying about family history, but I  
> broadened my comments about oral history to include the grievous  
> misrepresentation of Native Americans in the written record.
A lack of representation is way more accurate than misrepresentation  
for the most part. You get racially motivated misrepresentation in the  
classification of Native Americans and mixed-race people as has well  
documented.

> In the case of Native Americans, the oral history, where it wasn't  
> destroyed by the disease brought by the Europeans, is the only  
> record available.
Would you get off the danged soapbox already;) That statement in  
itself is not accurate. Archaeology provides the vast majority of the  
pre-contact information about Native Americans. You seem to attribute  
some sort of almost mystical purity of thought to oral history that is  
in dire need of critical evaluation. Reconstructing the past is not a  
binary process where something is either all right or all wrong. The  
preceding generation to mine had the hagiography of the Founding  
Fathers. Mine pulled them off their pedestals and the absolutists see  
them as nearly totally without merit. The pendulum has swung too far  
when both happen and will swing back. A balanced view of people of  
exceptional achievement in their appropriate historic context will  
allow the relatively intelligent to appreciate the achievements and to  
understand the messy personal parts and above all to see that their  
relative value is not extinguished by their so-called lack of total  
purity of thought, intellect and action.

Looking at the big picture, had we destroyed Jefferson before the  
Declaration of Independence, where would be now be?

> To dismiss oral history out of hand just because it is not written  
> down in the Europeans sense, seems to me to be a travesty in the  
> pursuit of history in such matters.
That is just not what Much wrote and certainly not what she meant.  
Oral history is like anything else in the record: something that has  
to be evaluated, critically re-worked and then woven into the fabric  
and this has to be re-thought periodically. You are again broad- 
brushing without nuance. Read her post carefully and you should be  
able to see the distinction.

Lyle Browning


>
>
> Anne
>
>
>
> Anne Pemberton
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> http://www.erols.com/apembert
> http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
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