“The Past” is not something that can be owned, but it can be held. These readings, specifically The Oral History Reader and I can see the Lights from Home are great examples for this. These readings show the importance of oral history and establish that history, can and has been used as a weapon for political and economic gain. An unfortunate truth. Oral history as stated in The Oral History Reader is a way for the underprivileged to fight against mainstream narratives and histories written to undermine the truth and the historical context as seen in the ongoing occupation of Palestine. History can be owned in the sense that someone can copyright and hold it as their “property”. However, this I personally feel does not work, it may work leally, but not in the reality of the world, in the context of humanities as a whole. History is information and information can never truly be owned.
I applied a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license to my project as I do not wish my words to be used commercially. I want my project to be available to the public so it may be used as a learning tool, as well as a tool for the advocacy for Native Rights. All of my sources are available under fair use as I am using them for educational purposes. The problems I am running into are that there are few oral histories that I have found most of what I have found is second hand sources.
