RiverCulture
The Beacon Institute launched RiverCulture to begin shaping its exploration of how rivers, estuaries and society interact over generations by collecting, preserving and exhibiting Hudson River documentary materials, including personal stories, photographs, paintings and historical objects.
Central to RiverCulture is The Oral History Project, an initiative to collect and interpret histories and first-person stories of living individuals whose life's work has been dedicated in large and small ways to rivers. The project gives voice to those who have shaped Hudson River history—public and private figures, environmentalists and industrialists, fishermen and artists, whose individual stories dramatically illustrate a period of tremendous change and should be preserved and studied by future generations.
In the first oral history project, Commercial Fishing on the Hudson River, dozens of volunteers have conducted and transcribed interviews to produce some fifteen oral histories of commercial fishermen.
Over the past 50 years, mismanagement and abuse of the Hudson have been mirrored dramatically in the plight of commercial fishermen. Often referred to as an endangered species, they have been denied their livelihood and way of life by polluters, unfair competition and bureaucratic regulations. Their numbers have diminished to the point of disappearance and, as they disappear, they carry with them the folk history of commercial fishing on the Hudson.
We are currently developing two additional oral history projects, one on environmental battles of the Hudson River, and the other on heroes of the Hudson—those individuals who have dedicated their careers to improving the quality of life along the Hudson.
The Beacon Institute is grateful to Roger Panetta Ph.D. from Fordham University for overseeing the Oral History Project. He has successfully designed and conducted several oral history projects, including The Hastings Waterfront, African American Migration to Westchester and The Mexican American Community in New Rochelle. He has appeared in Bill Moyers' TV documentary, America's First River, and co-authored The Hudson: An Illustrated Guide to the Living River.
If you would like to volunteer for this project, please call The Beacon Institute at (845) 838-1600.
