The Center recently provided support to five projects aiming to gather stories on the impact of Covid-19 on the people of the region focused on those disproportionately affected by the pandemic, including Latinx, new mothers, Indigenous communities, and immigrant communities as well as workers from the healthcare and meatpacking fields. Project participants will share their findings at this public panel discussion.

Panelists include:

Cristian Doña-Reveco and Isabelle Beulaygue
A University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Office of Latino/Latin American Studies (OLLAS) project led by Doña-Reveco and Beulaygue is partnering with the nationwide “Voces of a Pandemic” Oral History Project to add Latino/a stories from the Great Plains to the larger archive. The stories will focus on essential workers and community leaders from the Latino/a community and will disseminate the results via academic and community-angled publications.

Becky Buller
A project lead by Taylor Livingston and Buller, of UNL’s School of Global Integrative Studies, will examine the experiences of mothers of children born during the pandemic by working with related non-profits to recruit a diverse sample of mothers. Along with stories, the project aims to create a photo and map archive to give context to the mother’s experiences.

Amanda Morales
Professors in the UNL College of Education and Human Sciences, Ted Hamann and Morales are leading a project that stems from a recent class TEAC431J/831J: “Pandemics, Schools, and Helping Meatpacking Communities Recover from COVID19.” The project will record the perspective of those living in seven meatpacking communities in Nebraska, which have seen Covid-19 infections above the level of the rest of the state. Along with the archive, the project seeks to create educational materials about the role of schools in pandemic recovery.

Trevor Kauer, Jody Kellas, Cassidy Talady
From the UNL College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Communications graduate students Kauer and Taladay, under the mentorship of Professor Koenig Kellas are leading a project to collect and disseminate stories of frontline healthcare workers dealing with the pandemic across the Great Plains. The research will focus on linking healthcare workers stories with markers of health and well-being.

Wynema Morris
The Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC) project led by Morris focuses on interviews with the Omaha Tribal community in Nebraska as a way of both engaging in story collecting and traditional healing practices. It will reflect the cultural aspect of how a community supports itself during a difficult time. Along with adding to the archive, the project leaders intend to share this archive with tribal audiences in the region.

Learn more about each of the projects at: https://www.unl.edu/plains/great-plains-covid-19-stories

This session will be recorded and posted online afterward. This talk is part of the Paul A. Olson Great Plains seminar series and is free and open to the public.