One past, many stories

Myth: official records tell the whole story. Reality: records are made for audiences and power, and states, museums, schools, and media can mobilize the past for identity or legitimacy 🗂️.

Oral memories add lived experience 👂 They surface voices archives miss, but memory is selective, so compare them with other sources.

Family objects can carry what no full record kept: photos, letters, diaries, heirlooms. But what survives is partial, shaped by what was saved or lost 🧵.

Community testimony widens the record with shared memory and local knowledge 🗣️ Good history triangulates every source and asks who got to define the past.