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LIFE STORIES
The Group Cambodia, part of the Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) is currently involved in the five-year project CURA-Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by War, Genocide and other Human Rights Violations http://lifestoriesmontreal.ca/en, based at the Centre for Oral History at Concordia University. This alliance is a partnership between 40 researchers and the different communities living in Montreal, including Jewish, Rwandan, Cambodian and Haitian communities, as well as educational, artistic and human rights organisations.
The aim of the project is to collect the oral histories of Montrealers displaced by war, genocide and other human rights violations. The Group Cambodia records the testimonies of Cambodian Montrealers of all ages, religions, social and educational backgrounds.
People outside Cambodia, especially the children of genocide survivors, have heard very little about the country except in relation to the Pol Pot regime and the atrocities that are linked to it. The testimonies of Cambodians who lived through the regime are therefore precious because they can communicate the experience of life in Cambodia before the rise of the Khmer Rouge; these testimonies can describe a country which the Cambodian youth have never known.
Furthermore, the life stories and testimonies, which are rich and valuable accounts in their own right, will become the raw material with which the future generations will be able to reconstruct a memory of Cambodia that includes its difficult, traumatic and forgotten periods of history. These filmed and digitized oral histories will serve to create a « memory bank » accessible to all. |
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