Schneider, William, 2002 … So They Understand: Cultural Issues in Oral History, Logan, Utah, Utah State University Press, 198 pages.

William Schneider, currently curator of oral history at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Elmer Rasmuson Library, comes to the authorship of this volume honestly through decades of close, hands-on involvement in numerous Alaskan oral history endeavours. He has also spent time in South Africa helping a university there establish an oral history program to document the role of the university’s students and staff in that country’s resistance to apartheid. His book is enriched by this sojourn. Schneider’s writing is pleasingly, and intentionally, in tune with his topic in its informal, personal, and frequently autobiographical approach, as he relates, considers, and discusses one pertinent point after another. His text is appropriately supported by many fascinating examples of oral history stories drawn mainly from Alaska and South Africa—some remarkable hemispherical leaps here—and a few notable examples from the Canadian north based on the work of Julie Cruikshank and Murielle Nagy. The book’s central theme is the challenge of preserving meaning in oral history once it has been recorded and archived, a challenge born of Schneider’s misgivings about the ultimate value of oral history unsupported by sufficient contextual documentation. He states the problem frankly: “As I realize more about the differences between stories told and stories recorded, I question how good a job we are doing to preserve history and culture. I cringe a bit and ask myself what is missing from the archival record that was present in the recording session” (p. 7). In addressing this issue, Schneider discusses numerous points about which oral history archivists and curators should be mindful. These include, among others, ethical considerations, the representation and interpretation of materials, the need for cross-referencing, particularly where variants of stories occur, and the importance of providing as complete a description as possible of the context and situation in which the record was made and archived, in other words, the detailed “why and wherefore” of any given project. Moreover, the oral history archivist must move from being a mere caretaker of records to, Schneider suggests, a “[…] creator of records, a person whose mark on the record is visible to all” (p.163). The main lesson here is that much thought and preparation should be given to all aspects of oral history collection, documentation, and archiving, to recognize, in Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s words, quoted by Schneider, that the “act of collecting” is, or should be,“[…] an active act of production that prepares facts for historical intelligibility” (p. 163). Usefully, the book ponders many interrelated facets of the oral history and traditional knowledge field. For instance, there is a thoughtful, well-referenced (but perhaps not fully resolved) discussion of the differences between “oral traditions” and “oral history” and between “myths” and “legends,” concepts that are all too frequently, sometimes interchangeably, used without much thought being given to their meanings or distinctions. Schneider’s consideration of the various types or “genres” of oral history is also apt, and he is correct in drawing attention to what he terms the “neglected genre”—meaning, the record of formal gatherings and conferences of aboriginal peoples to discuss cultural and political issues. The proceedings of such meetings are now invariably recorded but not often properly documented and archived. There are, perhaps, some other genres of the oral history record that could be added to those listed by Schneider: for instance the solitary “self-taped” recording, and the recording where the interviewer and the interviewee are both elders, of similar age, from the same community. These forms of record have been used effectively in the Igloolik Oral History Project with results markedly different from, and usually richer than, those obtained in the more conventional …