The Oral History Project
The Beacon Institute launched the RiverCulture program in 2005 to explore the vital connection between the human community and rivers and estuaries. The program is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting and exhibiting a variety of documentary materials, including oral histories, photographs, paintings and historical objects.
Central to RiverCulture is the Oral History Project, which collects and interprets first-person accounts of individuals whose life's work has been dedicated to rivers and estuaries. Over time, the Project will feature public and private figures, environmentalists, industrialists, fishermen and artists, giving voice to those who have shaped, and been shaped by, the Hudson River.
The Working Hudson: Voices of Commercial Fishermen
Under the direction of Roger Panetta, Ph.D. of Fordham University, and with the help of 30 trained volunteers, the Oral History Project has already gathered more than 70 pre-existing and 15 new oral histories of commercial fishing on the Hudson. In addition, an extensive library of contemporary accounts of commercial fishing dating from the 1880s to the present has been compiled.
The development and implementation of a multi-media exhibit with online and traveling components that portrays the unique history and personal anecdotes of the Hudson's fishermen is underway, funded by a 2006 grant from the Hudson River Estuary Program of NYS DEC.
Click here for more: "Roger Panetta unveils The Beacon Institute's Oral History Project"
