Exploring radical feminista oral history methodology: implications for educational research and praxis

As two Chicana scholar-activists, we recognize the common approach to oral history research is often technical and pragmatic and that published teaching materials rooted in radical feminist of color and Indigenous intellectual traditions are limited. In this article, we trace an intellectual and scholarly genealogy that demonstrates there is no shortage of feminist oral history research by queer, Indigenous, and women of color scholars. What is clear from this genealogy is that the questions, concerns, intentions, and processes of oral histories within Indigenous and communities of color from a radical feminist approach have a different starting point and process than technical oral history approaches. We offer four contours that emerge from this genealogy to conceptualize what we refer to as a radical feminista oral history methodology informed by the theorizations of Indigenous and women of color oral historians and rooted in the ways of being/knowing of our communities and ancestors.