Oral history, ethical practices, and applications to Australian migrant heritage places

Abstract

What ethical considerations arise when identifying, conserving and interpreting migrant and ethnic-minority heritage? This chapter deals with living heritage, with and about local communities. It engages with oral history—and the ethical practices and discussions that oral history can offer this debate in the interdisciplinary field of heritage studies. The chapter is more than a set of guidelines on ‘working with’ communities and individual narrators; rather, it explores the epistemic application of oral history and the humanist and intersectional ethics that underpin its practice and theorisation. Oral history centres on relational and reflexive practice, two core ethical principles that can extend our approach to heritage places and their identification, conservation, and interpretation. I draw on a particular case study, a public history project conducted with ethnically and racially diverse communities in Melbourne, Australia. Integrating oral history methodologies that rest on relational and reflexive approaches to memory into heritage management practices challenges the nature of migrant and ethnic minority exclusion from heritage-making processes—the latter premised on ‘expert’ assessments. The particular ethical practices of oral history can lend to heritage management useful tools for inclusive heritage.