This article examines ways in which we engage the archive and orality to negotiate traumatic pasts in order to transform the legacy of land dispossession. It hones in on the silences of the archive and asks how we draw the inheritance of archival documents and materials into dialogue with living orality and places in the landscape. Who is remembering knowledges and meaning in the landscape of the Northern Cape and how is this being done against the poignant backdrop of the losses resulting from dispossession? How does inter-generational dialogue become an agent in shaping the inheritance of the future? Given the complexity of history and our reading of the past, what does it mean to become a good ancestor? What role could digital technology play in re-shaping identity and heritage among the storytellers, teenagers, ritual specialists and others who populate the region? This study examines the complex tensions between these questions in the context of specific oral history and storytelling projects that took place in previously dispossessed communities in the Northern Cape between 2003 and 2013.
Oral History Project: Lithuanian Students Study the Past to Gain Skills for the Future