The fall 2026 issue of Oral History Review gathers a remarkable collection of voices from across Indigenous oral history as it is practiced today, spanning geographies, epistemologies, communities, and nations. This special issue takes as its animating premise that Indigenous oral history is not a technique for preserving the past but a living practice of relation, accountability, and continuity that holds governance, land relations, cultural memory, and health across generations.
Readers will encounter Mi’kmaw oral history as living law, Diné oral history as intergenerational teaching, Lūchūan and Kanaka ʻOwi frameworks of relational responsibility, and Apurinã narratives in which ancestors are active subjects of the present landscape. Other essays bring these ideas to bear on methodology, pedagogy, archival ethics, and the relationship between oral history and intergenerational harm and healing.
The issue also features book and media reviews ranging from new releases, including Julian Brave NoiseCat’s We Survived the Night and the second edition of the Indigenous Oral History Manual, to classic works revisited, among them Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller, as well as reviews of digital tools shaping the future of Indigenous archival practice.
Taken together, these contributions bring Indigenous oral historians into sustained conversation with one another. The invitation extended here is for all oral historians to engage with what that conversation reveals.
Note: OHA members receive digital access via the Member Website to the Oral History Review, current and past issues (back to 1973). Members can also opt in to receive print issues of the journal twice a year.*