Sustainability and Resilience at the Grassroots Level: A Multinational, Multicultural, Multigenerational Oral History

The concept of sustainability has evolved far beyond its initial environmental foundations, expanding into a multidimensional framework that integrates multinational policies, multicultural values, and multigenerational knowledge, but there is a paucity of bottom-up or grassroots research. This paper is a case history comprising oral history supported by rigorous documentation including military records, census data, genealogical records, and scholarship extending over four centuries. A more nuanced understanding of resilience and adaptation emerges. An analysis of recent scholarship indicates that sus-tainability is a dynamic, narrative-driven process that requires an in-depth understanding of the spatial and temporal consequences of global shifts, ranging from climate catastrophes to the global flows of capital and large migrations of people. This paper uses oral history to show the adaptation of a multinational, multicultural, multigenerational family in North America to the social, political, economic, and technological challenges faced over 400 years with a focus on sustainability and resilience.