This paper reflects on a public oral history project that I developed with independent Rwandan researchers and faculty in History, Cultural Heritage Tourism, and Environment Conservation at Rwandan universities, the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy, and community stakeholders. Together, we trained students, faculty, and officials in oral history, digital media, and related skills to create a methodology appropriate for Rwandan audiences. We then interviewed elders and related experts about culturally significant plants, animals, and fungi upon which they have relied during periods of hardship. This is creating an unprecedented archival resource that will allow Rwanda’s Centre for Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management to develop educational materials, including interactive exhibits and other public-facing outputs, that highlight the climate and biodiversity crises facing Rwanda and identify where elders’ knowledge might help mitigate them.

This project must simultaneously navigate challenges of relevance to conversations at the interfaces of oral history and political violence, and the emergent ‘crisis oral history’ sub-field. Most notably, in an authoritarian context in which civilians often strive to maintain secrecy when dealing with officials, how might officials and community stakeholders partner effectively to conduct interviews and create public-facing outputs? And following the genocide and faced with ongoing poverty, to what extent can rural community stakeholders be convinced to prioritize environment conservation when doing so might exacerbate immediate economic hardship and interpersonal conflict? Our primary objective is to identify culturally-appropriate strategies for addressing the looming climate and biodiversity crises facing Rwanda that will not further marginalize economically deprived rural communities hard-hit by the 1994 genocide – during which Hutu Power extremists attempted to annihilate the Tutsi minority – and surrounding forms of political violence.

*This paper is being developed in conversation with Kathryn Nasstrom and Tricia Logan as part of a preferred panel on oral history and political violence.