Community-Initiated Oral History Projects

The Center for Oral History hopes to empower communities to document their own histories through training and consultation and offers this ScholarSpace page as a platform to make their oral histories publicly accessible. This collection was initiated to host Hawaiʻi Stories of Change: Kōkua Hawaiʻi Oral History Project, and we invite other communities to contact us about collecting and hosting their community oral histories with us on ScholarSpace.


Brother Eben Low

Evelyn Woods Nehenuiʻikalani Low was born in 1892 in the district of Kohala. Judith Graham compiled her conversations and interviews with him, along with archival research, for these recalls.

Browse full transcripts and documents on ScholarSpace, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Hawaii Stories of Change — Kokua Hawaii Oral History Project

When several poor minority communities in Hawaii faced evictions in the 1970s, groups of volunteer organizers and their associates were willing to stand between the tenants … Read more

Oʻahu North Shore Field School

The North Shore Field School started in 2012 as an Indigenous, community-based archaeological methods training program working at Kupopolo Heiau and ‘Uko‘a in the Waialua moku … Read more

Reflections of Palama Settlement II

This project is the second in a series; the first was recorded in 1996 during Palama Settlement’s Centennial, by the Center for Oral History. This second iteration of interviews was conducted by Paula Rath in 2022-2023 funded by a grant from the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities, featuring 15 interviews.

Browse full transcripts and documents on ScholarSpace, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Waiale’e Lako Pono

A continuation of the North Shore Field School (NSFS), the Waialeʻe Lako Pono Oral History project was funded in part by an award from the Provost’s Strategic Investment Initiative. In fall 2023, Dr. Tengan led the North Shore Field School with support from the North Shore Community Land Trust and the Center for Oral History. More than 20 students documented the life histories of nine kūpuna and community members with ties to Waialeʻe.

Browse full transcripts and documents on ScholarSpace, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.