PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The "Multicultural Midwest" project was first undertaken by the Spring 2002 section of American Studies 317: The Midwest at Minnesota State University Moorhead. This class was designed to answer questions about the Midwest using an interdisciplinary approach, including the study of the region's geography and the literature of the region. The final project for this course was an oral history project that documented the multicultural Midwest of the Moorhead, Minnesota area. Moorhead is located in West-Central Minnesota, directly across the Red River from Fargo, North Dakota.
Our particular focus for this project was creating a body of oral history research to donate to the Clay County Historical Society on the underrepresented topic of Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and recent immigrants to the Moorhead area. Our incentive for this work is provided by two documents produced by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and a follow-up document produced by the Justice Circle convened to respond to this report. The Justice Circle suggested that one way that "Cultural Understanding and Cultural Competence" in the Moorhead area could be improved would be for the Clay County Historical Society (CCHS) to "develop, display, and publicize to the entire community an exhibit of the multicultural history and contributions of people of color in this region." Additionally, we were inspired in our work by reading the "Valley to the World" series published in the December 2002 Forum of Fargo Moorhead, our area's newspaper of record. Learning more about the history of the multicultural Midwest convinced us that conducting and transcribing oral histories provided a way for us to add to CCHS's collections and document this history before it disappears.
Oral History Project Objectives:
As a class, we developed the following working objectives for the project.
This project sets out to conduct oral history interviews with residents of the Moorhead area. This project will record stories from different perspectives in order to document one story of diversity in the Midwest. We are particularly interested in the following issues:
1) how and why this area is growing in ethnic and cultural diversity;
2) how Moorhead residents have worked to honor and preserve cultural traditions;
3) how some residents and institutions of a place that has long been a home to immigrants have at times practiced discrimination against immigrants and other newcomers, as well as Native Americans; and
4) how members of the Moorhead community have made efforts to raise awareness of this issue, and what work still needs to be done.
It is our hope that this project will give a more complete and accurate picture of the Midwest to future citizens. |