Discovering the Stories
of Native Ohio
There is more to history than meets the eye. For many historical topics, written records are insufficient and inaccurate. Native American Indian history is one such topic.
For centuries, historians have relied upon written records concerning Native Americans, which were strictly written by Europeans. This only offers one side of the story. To understand the whole picture, historians must turn to nontraditional sources.
Being an oral culture, the best way to understand Native culture and history is by listening to oral histories. The Ohio State University Newark Earthworks Center is working on an oral history project, focusing on the stories and concerns of Native people living in Ohio.
The purpose of this site is to provide the user with an overview of Native American Indian population trends during the past century and to determine whether the NEC Oral History archive represents tribal nations from across the country. More stories must be gathered in order to more accurately represent the Native population as a whole, but the collection already contains a variety of tribes represented within it.
