Kasaundra Schenk
Communication between cultures
April 4th, 2014
Guest Speaker
On April 8th, a guest speaker named Kathleen Buescher-Milligan came to Florissant Valley Community College to give a presentation known as Listening to Indians. During the presentation, she talked about a man named Sam Myers and the things that he had done throughout his lifetime. One day, Kathleen found a bunch of cassette tapes that consisted of over 144 interviews with American Indians. After finding this collection in a wooden box, she moved them into metal filing cabinets and then viewed each of them. Soon after finding these tapes, the collection joined the oral history collection in Missouri.
The man known as Sam Myers was the one that created the interviews that were on each tape. He was from Minnesota which is where he obtained a bachelors degree and then later got his masters in Arizona on American history. In 1967, Sam joined the faculty of Florissant Valley Community College. After teaching many history courses, he applied for a sabbatical which is a time off of work (a summer and/or a semester) to be able to do a project. When he submitted his application for his sabbatical, it consisted of wanting to travel the United States to create interviews with American Indians about their place in society. He covered topics such as sports, games, and culture. His trip included interviews with people in over 21 states and traveled 15,488 miles across the US.
After being back from his trip, Sam decided that he wanted to listen to each and every interview and type them up. Once he had this idea, he applied for a National Endowment for the Humanities which were for him to have someone hired to help him listen to the interviews and type them up. Not too long after this, Sam Myers passed away on May 6th, 1978 from a heart attack.
After hearing this presentation, it really had me thinking that it is amazing for someone to go around the United States just to speak to people about...
