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I'm enviously following Heritage Saskatchewan's delegates tweeting from the 2012 Heritage Summit in Montreal. They're discussing how realistic it is to save heritage in the form of buildings and sites compared to saving 'People' through oral history, journals and interviews. Coming from a museum background, I am all over this! As a kid I gravitated toward the stories 'round the kitchen table from those who had lived it. I carried a healthy skepticism into high school history, knowing there must have been another side to the story. After I heard the expression 'the victors write the stories' it made sense to question early interpretations soaked in privilege and no small amount of racism. I was very fortunate to spend the '70s working at the St-Boniface Museum under the wing of an amazing storyteller. Henri Letourneau was born in Saskatchewan - I believe he referred to the area as Tas d'osiers (Willow Bunch). His recollections of characters and situations were gathered as oral histories from older Métis men and women. Many songs and tales were preserved on reel-to-reel recordings and artifacts were collected for the museum. Some tales and legends were published in a book "Henri Letourneau Raconte", which I had the honour of illustrating. Those accounts proved a welcome balance to what they had taught me in school. When I moved to Saskatchewan, I continued to ask questions of the old timers for their experiences of Saskatchewan history in the making. I'm now getting a glimpse from Elders in the Aboriginal community on their world-views - certainly not the way they taught us in school! Having said that, the current curriculum is much more inclusive and will go a long way to bring understanding and pride to our citizens. And all we had to do was listen. Karen Handling Heritage Saskatchewan