Hopefully you are reading this because you want to change something: change the way you build relationships, change how your community is talked about, change your organization’s approach to storytelling. It is important to remember that there are three critical levels at which change can be worked toward and realized: micro (personal/interpersonal), mezzo (groups, organizations and communities) and macro (systems, states, countries etc. – for more information, check out our Slow Food Live on social permaculture with Adam Brock and Abrah Dresdale). Cultivating awareness, knowledge and skills around the dynamics of power, harm and solidarity and our experiences within them is a critical first step. This framework for cultural exchange aims to present ways we can change how storytelling is used as a tool for shaping lives, culture, society and history for the better.

Disproportionate allocation of resources to certain groups; lowered expectations; discriminatory practices, unchallenged stereotypical beliefs.

Discomfort in noting difference; beliefs / actions that assume the world is fair and achievement is based on merit; we treat everyone the same: this approach ignores cultural strengths.

Cultural appropriation tends to take place when we are operating from a place of cultural incapacity or blindness and is usually among the prolonged effects of cultural destruction such as genocide or racial oppression. “Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture… it refers to taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, and religious symbols.” (Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Exchange – What’s the Difference? Uddeshya Delhi)

Practitioners are sensitive to issues affecting people of the global majority but these are not an identified priority.

Advocacy: on-going education of self and others; support, modeling, and risk-taking behaviors; a vision that reflects multiculturalism.

Interdependence; personal change and transformation; alliance for groups other than one’s own; follow-through social responsibility to fight social discrimination and advocate for social diversity.

Cultural exchange comes to life when we step into a place of cultural competence; it can also be the very process that helps us move closer to our own cultural proficiency. 

“Cultural exchange implies a mutual and beneficial sharing of cultures and beliefs. It is viewed as inevitable and contributing to diversity and free expression. It is seen as something which is usually done out of admiration of the cultures being imitated, with no intent to harm them.” (Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Exchange – What’s the Difference? Uddeshya Delhi)

• How might unconscious or conscious biases impact the story? How might lived experiences invigorate this story?
• How is power showing up in this interaction?
• How might white supremacy culture show up in the story creation process or in the content of the story itself?
• How can we be trauma-informed in approaching story creation? How can we work toward a process that centers care and compassion?

• How are we rooting story creation work in exchange, rather than extraction? What are we offering to each other throughout this experience that is beneficial to all involved? 
• Where can our relationship go after the story is published? How will we intentionally maintain a connection to each other and our communities?
• In what ways might collective experiences in story creation change our perceptions, beliefs, motivations and ideas about the world? Are we open to that change right now?

• What are the types of privilege I hold? How might my privilege affect or show up in this new relationship? How can I deepen this awareness and be accountable to leveraging my privilege and power to create an equitable exchange? 
• How can I lessen harm, appropriation and work to bring a lens of decolonization in my interactions with the storyteller? How can I be aware of and work to lessen those impacts in the final product?
• How might I use / leverage my white privilege to uplift / power up others through storytelling? 

From Why Should I Tell You? A Guide to Less Extractive Reporting | UW-Madison (Rule 4)

When Alex V. Hernandez co-founded the website 90 Days, 90 Voices in the wake of President Trump’s initial travel ban, he wanted to create a place where readers could hear about the experiences of the immigrants and refugees whose lives were affected by these policy debates. But, Hernandez says, considering the life experiences of their sources, they wanted to give the sources as much editorial control as possible.

“When you’re forced to migrate, when you’re not leaving your country because it’s something you want to do, you’re leaving because you have to, because there’s a danger in your country, that whole immigrant experience is one where you give up a lot of agency,” he says … “Because that process takes away so much agency from people, when we decided to do the 90 Days, 90 Voices project, we interviewed people in that Studs Terkel oral history manner, but the whole goal was to use a transformative storytelling technique to give just a little agency back to that person in how their story is told.”

So in an effort to give sources some power over their own stories, the 90 Days team allows sources discretion at various steps. Sources decide whether to include their full names. Hernandez says that, in their day jobs, he and his colleagues avoided using anonymous sources whenever possible. But they knew that their immigrant and refugees sources had a lot to lose in that political moment, and they “didn’t want to throw gasoline on the fire.”

At 90 Days, sources also decide if they would like to be depicted in a photo or if they would like one of a cadre of freelance artists to render them in a drawing instead. And before the story publishes, the journalist will read it back to them, allowing them to decide what to leave in or take out. Often, 90 Days reporters will use an “as told to” format in which the journalist edits an interview to create a first-person account using only the source’s own words.

Slow Food BIPOC Farmer Oral History Project
Slow Food Greater Olympia, in partnership with the Evergreen State College

“This project was based on oral history interviews completed by three college students for whom I was the field supervisor. The students earned some credits in courses on racial justice topics at The Evergreen State College. It was successful because of the work of the students at the college and the expertise of the faculty who taught a unit on methodologies of historical and qualitative research in the course. …

“It was important to the faculty that students have the unit on methodology before they connect with the interviewees. My role was to teach basic protocols, tools, and ethics for oral history interviews. Students caught that the interview was a way to connect personally and required that they bring their authentic selves into the interaction. In the raw transcript I observed students identifying with the BIPOC farmer because of common experiences as BIPOC individuals. It is possible the students listened more deeply than I have the capacity to listen given their own lived experience. A speaker, even in the virtual world, can often tell when they are really being heard. The biggest challenge was getting busy farmers to even respond to requests and then to grant the interview opportunity. I knew only one of the farmers interviewed and used that connection to advantage. The rest of the work was similar to the typical process of producing a final document that students already understand.”

— Loretta Seppanen, facilitator