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“No One Can Tell Our Stories Like We Can”: The Ypsi Farmers & Gardeners Oral History Project
Abstract:
Growing food has been a contested site of resistance for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities since the founding of the US. Colonization entailed violent attempts to destroy culture. People have always resisted and found ways to continue cultural traditions, despite ongoing cultural imperialism and land dispossession in BIPOC and working-class communities. The Ypsi Farmers & Gardeners Oral History Project - https://history.ypsilibrary.org/ypsilanti-farmers-gardeners/ - is a community-driven public library-based oral history archive of BIPOC and/or working-class farmers and gardeners in Ypsilanti, MI. We recognize how oral traditions serve as an essential site of cultural transmission, particularly within oppressed communities.We conducted oral history interviews with 6 BIPOC and/or working-class elders who grow food in the de-industrial city of Ypsilanti, Michigan. We are continuing to connect with farmers and gardeners and collect their stories, with the goal of ultimately having 25 food growers represented in the archive. As a local expert in African American genealogy and history, Omer Jean Winborn is acutely aware of the damage that comes from histories being untold, mistold, or deliberately hidden, and she is fond of saying “We must tell our own stories. No one can tell our stories like we can.” Another narrator expressed that getting a chance to tell your story is “good medicine.” A core theme that came out of the interviews was the importance of growing food intergenerationally and passing down wisdom from ancestors to the next generations. Multiple narrators did not have direct descendants interested in growing food and expressed fear of losing agricultural knowledge and experience going forward. The oral history project is one small effort to ensure that these stories are not lost, and that they are told in people’s own words and available to their own communities.