Minnesota Malayalee Association (MMA) is proud to announce that we have been approved for a grant from Minnesota Historical Society to start the Oral History Project.
The project objective is “To capture the oral history of the Minnesota Malayalee community; immigrants from Kerala, India and their successors who made Minnesota their home, and how they use their language“
Towards this we will be conducting a series of Oral Interviews and the narrators will include people from different walks of life, including art, business, education, religion and age groups. We will soon be sending a template to request nominations from community. In broad category, we will have Malayalees from 1st,2nd and 3rd generations established in MN pre-1995 and post-1995.
Digital audio/video and hard copies of the transcripts will be maintained at MMA, IAM, Minnesota Historical Society and University of Michigan. The transcripts will be published in the website of MMA (Minnesota Malayalee Association) and will be available to Kerala Council of Historical Research (www.kchr.ac.in) for reference for future Oral history projects. An example Oral history project transcript can be found at India Association of Minnesota Oral History Project – IAM History: Interview with Godan Nambudiripad : Collections Online : mnhs.org.
We would like to thank our community members Mr. Godan Nambudiripad for his vision to create Oral history program to capture the oral history of the Indians in Minnesota, Dr. Savithri Namboodiripad who has graciously extended the resources and time in collaboration with University of Michigan for the project and Mr. Raj Menon who is our guide and consultant for the project and has helped multiple such oral history projects.
Best Regards
MMA Board
