A World on the Move

Growing up in a generation of change, our relationship to “home” is constantly evolving. We as humans are more on the move than ever before: with mass migration and forced displacement, over 280 million people around the world are living outside their country of birth, some as migrants, and some as refugees. Yet we have this human need to belong to a place. Our cultural heritage is intrinsically woven into our sense of place–our environments and surroundings.

So how do people hold on to their unique cultures and sense of home amidst migration? How are those memories passed on to new generations growing up far from home?

In recent years, incredible leaps have been made to understand how storytelling facilitates the social transmission of memory. According to Princeton neuroscientist Dr. Uri Hasson, storytelling is one of the most powerful tools humans have to create shared memories across borders, brains, and generations. With fMRI scanners at his lab in Princeton, Dr. Hasson’s research has demonstrated that when human brains hear the same story, they start to show similar brain activity or mirror one another. This amazing neural mechanism allows us to actually transmit brain patterns, sharing memories and knowledge. This means emotive storytelling is the world’s most effective device to scientifically transmit memory from one brain to another.

Amidst increasing mass migration and globalization, we risk vast portions of the globe’s cultural diversity disappearing. Just as we want to preserve the earth’s incredible biodiversity, we also need to preserve the rich tapestries of languages, traditions, and histories that are part of the cultural diversity of human life on this planet.

Storytelling is what helps us remember. And our memories make us who we are as humans.

Storytelling for Cultural Preservation

National Geographic Explorers Hailey Sadler and Darian Woehr of The Home Collective created their project, Memories of Home, to explore the question: As humans migrate, how do they rebuild “home” from only their memories? They embarked on a multi-year collaboration with the Warao, one of the oldest ethnic groups in Venezuela, whose homeland is the Orinoco Delta. Their name translates to “the boat people,” reflecting how their way of life and cultural identity is intertwined with the vast labyrinth of waterways that they call home. Traditionally, the Warao are known as guardians of the river. They live in stilt houses over the water and travel by canoes carved from the trunks of Buriti palm trees.

Since 2014, Venezuela’s humanitarian, economic, political, and social crisis has forced thousands of people to make the difficult decision to leave for neighboring countries. More than 7 million people have left the country, the largest exodus in Latin America in recent history. Since 2014, over 7,000 Indigenous Venezuelans (65% of whom are Warao) have left their homeland for Brazil. Now, a new generation of Warao children is growing up in refugee camps with no firsthand memories of the waterways that have defined their culture for centuries.

Through photography, film, and oral storytelling, Memories of Home documents how Warao grandmothers are harnessing the power of storytelling to creatively pass down cultural memory to their grandchildren in Brazil. To create more tangible memories, their stories of home are interwoven with play, interactions in the natural world, and tactile practices like the Warao traditional art of weaving.

Additionally, the short film, Existimos En La Memoria, invites viewers into the experience of what intergenerational passage of memory feels like on a personal level, through intimate conversations between one Warao grandmother, María, and her granddaughter, Marucha. To María, the Venezuelan delta is her home. To Marucha, these refugee camps are all she knows. Through the rhythms of their daily lives, viewers get a glimpse at the complexities of raising a new generation in displacement. María and Marucha’s conversations demonstrate how memories are processed and passed down across generations, despite being far away from an environment that is at the heart of their unique culture and identity.

Remembering as Resistance and Resilience

As Indigenous communities are facing fraught situations globally due to climate change, resource extraction, corruption and crime, globalization, and forced displacement, the Warao community is a microcosm of what it can look like to creatively preserve a cultural conception of "home” for new generations growing up outside of their home environment.

Home is not just about housing—our environments of origin shape our language, food, clothing, spirituality, music, and ways of life. Throughout human history, intergenerational passage of this knowledge is how we build the cultural identities that give us a sense of place and belonging. For displaced communities, preserving and passing down this knowledge is an act of resilience that can become a form of resistance against circumstances outside their control. Memories of Home illuminates how these memories are shared between generations in order to carry home with them as they migrate.

Darian and Hailey designed this project and short film to serve as an access point into a broader conversation around the neuroscience of storytelling and the power it holds for cultural preservation amidst generational displacement. By interacting with this project and viewing the film, learners will visualize the invisible losses of the Indigenous Warao community’s displacement through the narratives of two generations’ voices weaving together. Learners can also explore the concept of “home” and how memories and stories are shaped through intergenerational passage.

Learning Activities and Discussion Prompts

As you interact with the film above, encourage your learners to dive deeper into some of the key themes of storytelling, memories, and home. Have learners take a look at the Memories of Home StoryMap for more context on migration, displacement, storytelling and the Warao people as well. Some suggested activities or discussion questions include:

• Facilitate a discussion with your learners about the film. You can ask them questions such as, “What is the meaning of home?” “Why do you think María and Marucha’s story is important?” “What does it mean to ‘exist in memory’?”
• Ask your learners to close their eyes and picture their home. Prompt them to think about: What does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it smell like? What do learners like about home, and what do they dislike? Allow learners time to draw a representation of their home from memory. If possible, have learners bring in photos of their home and compare the two images. How does our memory differ from what’s captured in the photo? Why might memories create different images in our head?
• Invite learners to practice the concept of intergenerational passages by interviewing someone in their life who is older than them. This could be a grandparent, neighbor, community leader, or friend. Have them inquire, “Tell me about your home.” Ask learners to take notes on what they learned. Alternatively, learners can draw a picture of what is being described to them. Have your learners compare what they’ve heard about their interviewee’s home and their own home. What is different? What is the same?
• For learners between 9th and 12th grade, consider implementing the Memories of Home lesson plan.

This film was produced by The Home Collective, a global collective of storytellers partnering with scientists, academics, issue experts, and community leaders to create experimental research and visual projects that explore the concept of home and how it will define the future. The Home Collective was co-founded by Hailey Sadler and Darian Woehr.