The oral histories of more than a dozen past residents of the village have been preserved in a project initiated by the Neubergthal Heritage Foundation. University of Manitoba Department of History Ph.D student Jonathan Hildebrand interviewed the participants who grew up and lived in the community as early as the 1930s and as late as the 80s.
"The project was intended to hear people's memories and recollections of growing up in the village," Hildebrand explained. "Things like the village streets, yards, homes, people and stuff like that. My role was to conduct interviews, so I did that with our contact people. The Foundation had developed kind of a list of of folks who might be interested (and) would be good to interview."
The process included Hildebrand meeting with the participants, recording the interviews and then transcribing those stories. His work was presented at the recent DARP Days held in the village in late September, and will ultimately stay with the Foundation.
Having been born and grown up in Altona, Hildebrand really enjoyed the entire experience.
"It was illuminating for me, because I know something of the area where I'm from, but I didn't grow up in a small Mennonite street village, it's different than growing up in town," he shared. "It was interesting to hear people's own recollections of what that was like. It was very much finding out more, even though I'm not from Neubergthal. In a way, it was learning a little bit more about my own roots from the area, but also learning more of the distinctiveness about village life, which is not something that is part of my lived experience, even though I'm from from the area."
Uniqueness of village life
That uniqueness of growing up in the village was a theme that came through clearly in the interviews Hildebrand conducted.
"Growing up in a street village was really different than growing up in a small town, even though it seems like those are both rural, which they are, they're actually very different," he said. "And those are both different than growing up, say on a quarter (section) in a school district, but not in the village. There's all these in sort of the rural setting which some people might think of as kind of the same type of setting. There's all these very, very distinct differences between town, village, quarter section and the district. I thought that was a pretty valuable thing to keep in mind, just the very unique and different experiences of rural life and rural living."
He also feels the timeframe covered in the oral histories is also unique.
"It's a bit of a later period than, say the first Mennonites who settled in the area, but it's important to have that period," he said. "Time goes on (and) that is now sort of history, and we can look back on that period of history of village life and see what that was like, too."
Oral history preservation valuable
Hildebrand feels preserving these oral histories is very valuable, and brings something different than the typical written historical accounts you find in libraries.
"I think one difference is, looking through history documents and in archives, you do find oral histories may be written down here and there, all those kind of remembrances, (but) you really have to dig for them a bit more through the written sources," he said. "I think having an archive of recorded and transcribed oral histories all in one place can be useful to find, and go through those memories and those stories straight from the people who are telling them all in one place."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Jonathan Hildebrand, below.