Sharing Stories of the Counterculture in the Southwest

By: Meredith Davidson, 19th & 20th Century Southwest Collections Curator, New Mexico History Museum and the Palace of the Governors

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, StoryCenter partnered with the New Mexico History Museum to guide a group of state residents through the digital storytelling process, as part of the “Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest” exhibition. In this piece, exhibition co-curator Meredith Davidson talks about the project and shares her views about the importance of connecting people through storytelling.

Why do people tell stories? My most immediate response would be that stories connect us to each other. A good story lets a listener dive into another place and time. A good story also links a teller and a listener by inviting the listener to imagine. The great thing about stories is that they don’t live in a vacuum. Listeners are able to imagine because they pull from their own memories and histories. This is why stories are so meaningful, because the voices of storytellers recounting a lived experience remind us all that our paths through time are the threads that weave the complex tapestry called history.

Curators are at their core storytellers. It is our job to take the life of an object and blend it with the accounts of unique individuals and events throughout time. In the end, exhibits often create narrative arcs that take visitors on a journey, helping them form a personal connection to the topics at hand.

In 2017, the New Mexico History Museum and the Palace of the Governors mounted Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest. Co-curated by me and Jack Loeffler, a historian who has been recording audio interviews and soundscapes across the Southwest for over 40 years, the nearly 5,000 square foot exhibit introduces visitors to the region's history during the 1960s and 70s.

The 1960s saw thousands of people in their late teens and twenties moving away from traditional ways of life to explore their own spiritual and physical lives. Born to parents who survived the Second World War, American youth—the Baby Boomers, as they would eventually be called—began to question the status quo. Interviews with over forty people put personal stories at the forefront of the experience, and provide a way to explore the era, with memories ranging from drug-induced mysticism to active protests against the Vietnam war. From urban sit-ins to back-to-the-land communes, the speakers’ newly formed consciousness highlights the deeper meaning in the Southwest as seen through revived Native American perspectives and Hispano activism. Those coming of age in the 1960s saw daily, graphic television coverage of national and global events describing a world where values had run amok. As a response, disenfranchised middle-class youth discovered new ways to engage in a practice of counterculture.

With personal stories driving the exhibit, the museum staff wanted to take the idea of first person accounts beyond the walls of the museum, so we partnered with StoryCenter to create a workshop around the themes of the exhibit, including activism, alternative living, and identity politics. Over three days, ten participants, representing six New Mexico communities (Silver City, Taos, Dixon, Las Vegas, Placitas, and Espanola) were guided through a digital storytelling workshop, exploring these themes through their stories. We invited people who lived through the era along with people from the younger generation who connected with the themes. The workshop surfaced memories of conscientious objection, commune life, and rural life. What each teller brought forth was completely unique.

A story about labor, social justice, and generations. This story was made in a workshop facilitated by StoryCenter (http://www.storycenter.org).

When the exhibit opened, the museum hosted all of the digital storytelling workshop participants and their families for a story screening. Forty-eight people attended and were captivated by the stories. The event sparked a lively conversation about the power of personal storytelling. The workshop gave the museum the spark needed to extend the project even further. We’ve hit the road! At the helm is Judy Goldberg, a radio and documentary producer who has done media projects with youth for decades. Ms. Goldberg will be building on the stories made in the StoryCenter workshop by reaching out to communities throughout the state: Turn on Tune In Workshops.

The connections are palpable. We started in Las Vegas, where storytellers recounted everything from childhood memories of the deplorable conditions farm workers faced in California, to vivid memories linking rural Vietnamese workers with a storyteller’s own rural upbringing in New Mexico. In Silver City, a participant shared memories of traveling from the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco across the country to New York during the height of the hippie days. Another participant spoke about her family’s experience with discrimination based on her Hispanic background, and the segregation her parents’ generation endured within the school system.

These tales all seem so different, but as one participant noted: “I learned to appreciate the value of our stories. If we all knew each other’s stories, we would live in a more empathetic and compassionate world. Hearing other people’s stories is like learning of their humanity. Even though all of our stories were quite different, we found a commonality, a shared humanity. We drew closer to one another. We were becoming a family.”

In today’s political and social context, this appreciation is something to be cherished. StoryCenter’s work, along with other public storytelling programs, helps us all connect a little better to each other and to our diverse, but shared, history.

View all of the New Mexico History Museum stories now.