HERITAGE LEADERSHIP*
“The Four Truths: Activating Inquiry and Story in Ways that Have the Potential to Heal” by Theresa Coble and Christina Cid, introduced by Theresa Coble
Joe Fedderson (Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation) created a root-gathering basket for the High Desert Museum’s Creations of Spirit exhibit. Photo credit LaRonn Katchia (Warm Springs/Wasco/Paiute) for the High Desert Museum.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION:
In 2023, Theresa Coble and Christina Cid launched a conversation about the four truths—a framework developed by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) in the aftermath of Apartheid in South Africa. Since then, the Heritage Leadership doctoral program at the University of Missouri – St. Louis (including Christina and Theresa) has published a 3-part article series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) that introduced our Model for Engaging with Contested Heritage. Part 2 in that series further develops our thinking about four truth inquiry and how it supports efforts to grapple with contested heritage.
The four truths include forensic truth, personal truth, social truth, and healing truth. As Christina says, “Truth emerges through inquiry.” Inquiry into forensic truth requires verifying and corroborating facts; situating evidence in time periods, settings, and cultural contexts; and weaving facts, patterns, contexts, and worldviews to create PLACE STORIES. Inquiry into personal truth exposes the diversity of people’s lived experiences while also ushering untold stories into public awareness. Personal truth generates ME STORIES that, ideally, support empathy, perspective taking, and story stewardship among listeners. Inquiry into social truth represents a core challenge: How can people within a society create WE STORIES by weaving the sum and substance of forensic and personal truths into a cohesive and holistic understanding of how the world works? Formulating social truth may require examining systems, interrogating grand narratives, and coming together to redefine what an abstract concept like freedom or ecological justice looks like in a specific context. When people in society acknowledge past harms, partner with those who have suffered injustice and/or with their descendants, it’s possible to activate the healing power of story to repair and restore relationships and generate ALL OF US STORIES.
As the SATRC observed, “Truth has the potential to both heal and alienate.” Interpreters daily confront this truth-telling tension: Truth has the potential to both heal and alienate. Interpreters who seek to convey past events and present realities accurately, without minimizing complexity, face the challenge of working through contested heritage topics. One way to work through contested heritage topics is to engage in four truth inquiry. Through their walks, talks, exhibits, and other interpretive offerings, interpreters also walk alongside others as they grapple with contested heritage topics. Walking alongside others is an iterative process that centers story, invites sharing, supports learning from and with others, and requires that we collectively grapple with sticky problems. See the Heritage Leadership department’s articles on The Interpretive Wheel (Nov/Dec 2025) and Engaging with Contested Heritage – Part 3 (Mar/Apr 2025) for more about how to apply four truth inquiry and crucial engagement processes in interpretive contexts.
Theresa and Christina are re-sharing their 2023 article on the four truths because they hope interpreters will be equipped to activate inquiry and story in ways that have the potential to heal.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
The Four Truths: Activating Inquiry and Story in Ways that Have the Potential to Heal
By Theresa Coble and Christina Cid
Launching a Conversation…
Please join us in a conversation about truth, but not singular truth. Here we explore four truths. We think South Africa’s four truth framework could help interpreters engage topics that are politically fraught, heavily nuanced, or even traumatic. As interpreters practice and apply the four-truth approach, we anticipate that inquiry and story will be activated in ways that have the potential to heal.
Theresa
Christina, we're going to talk about the four truth framework—it’s a framework that emerged through the work of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC was established in the 1990s to uncover the truth about what happened in South Africa during Apartheid. They identified four truths, including forensic truth, personal truth, social truth, and healing truth. I'm excited about this topic! Lucien Meadows—the managing editor for Legacy—said this is an important topic for NAI. You’re an associate editor for Legacy, why do you think NAI sees this as central?
Christina
I think NAI sees this as central because truth emerges through inquiry. Arriving at truth requires that people grapple with the past and present. And the four truth framework helps us think about what the inquiry process might look like. Ideally, it provides a brave space where people can connect with each other across differences.
Theresa
And we're not talking about a reductionistic notion of truth—a view that might focus on "facts" while being dismissive of how folklore, for example, conveys truth. One of the articles in this issue of Legacy focuses on integrity, truth, accuracy, and responsibility. Similarly, we'll situate truth within a series of related concepts. I think, at its core, truth honors, depends upon, and even restores relationships, though it’s no panacea. The TRC said that truth has the potential to both heal and alienate.
Theresa Coble
Christina Cid
Nez Perce tribal members and NPS employees meet on the Big Hole National Battlefield to gather information for future projects. Photo credit NPS.
Christina
At the High Desert Museum, we're in partnership with community and Indigenous knowledge holders. Our Indigenous partners might tell us a story, then we'll seek to convey that story in ways that reveal their perspectives, values, and knowledge. As museum guests encounter the people, places, and objects of the High Desert, they may bump up against their biases and misconceptions. Sometimes we have to debunk myths, but mostly we focus on bringing diverse voices together and telling authentic place stories. We think that sets the stage for healing.
Theresa
You know, I recently reread volume 1, chapter 5 in the TRC Report since that's where the TRC introduces the four truth framework. I think the TRC, under the leadership of Bishop Desmond Tutu, created an opportunity for a pluralistic democracy to emerge. From the ashes of Apartheid, they sought to build a society based on the rule of law and an uncompromising commitment to human dignity.
Christina
Theresa, I wonder whether NAI members have watched your TED talk (see link at the end of the article)? It’s a primer for the four truths and it explores grief and healing. When I read the TRC report, I ask myself, in societies where systemic racism is so entrenched, how do you move to a place of shared understanding? A place where you can repair the harms from the past and come together as a people?
Theresa
And that work doesn’t only happen through full-blown truth commissions. If heritage sites want to foster unity, reconciliation, and a sense of civic purpose, then the work of the TRC is relevant to what they do at their sites.
Launching a Conversation…
We weave facts, patterns, context, and worldview to create PLACE stories.
Christina
Now's a good time to introduce our four truth graphic. Hey everyone, check out Figure 1. A lot of the TRC’s work focused on forensic truth—a process of bringing to light facts and evidence, and then putting those "facts" through an extensive verification and corroboration process. After that, you have to situate those facts in relation to observed patterns in society. But if you stop there, it’s incomplete. Forensic truth illuminates the context from which place stories emerge. It requires you to weave facts, patterns, and key elements of the environment together in ways that reveal relationships.
Theresa
Going back to the need for verification, Michael Ignatieff once quipped, "All that a truth commission can achieve is to reduce the number of lies that can circulate unchallenged in public discourse." I'm hoping that heritage site interpreters can use the four truth approach to better effect, but at a minimum, we should reduce the number of lies that can circulate unchallenged.
Figure 1. Coble & Cid’s Approach to the Four Truth Framework.
Christina
In the four truth graphic, we suggest that generating forensic truth is an inquiry process, but really, inquiry continues throughout the four truth cycle. I teach an expansive view of how science works that goes beyond traditional hypothesis testing and linear thought processes, but I too can get siloed within familiar, habitual ways of knowing. When I do, I'm less generative, less creative, and less connected to traditional knowledge holders. So, I have to continuously ask myself, "What lens am I using?" and "Whose voice is missing?"
Theresa
Christina, I've heard you say with some dismay, "If we just look at archives, we miss so much." Tell me more…
Christina
Well, at the High Desert Museum, we’ve curated exhibits with Indigenous knowledge holders before, but now we’re collaborating with them on a much larger scale on the renovation of a permanent exhibit. We’ve found that when you’re working with communities that transmit stories through oral tradition, you can surface a lot more forensic truth when you engage in conversations with them about archives, objects, places, and more. These conversations emerge as trust is established, and the conversations can't be rushed.
Theresa
At the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, an exhibit highlighted that people, place, and story are central to how Indigenous people relate to objects. The exhibit also emphasized that objects have winiko, or spirit.
Christina
Western science has discounted traditional Indigenous knowledge. Through the lens of the supremacy of western science, facts are elevated and stories that have been passed down through generations are marginalized. I want to make sure that we’re pushing against that mindset and cultivating nuance about worldview.
Quarriers at Pipestone National Monument remove quartzite layers to reach catlinite, or pipestone, the material used to make ceremonial pipes. Photo credit N. Barber.
Personal & Social Truth
We weave PLACE stories and ME stories to create WE stories.
Theresa
If we’re working our way through Figure 1, we should turn our attention to personal truth and social truth.
Christina
In the TRC report, Bishop Desmond Tutu framed the work of the Commission saying: “Everyone should be given a chance to say his or her truth as he or she sees it…[We] recognize the healing potential of telling stories…[and we seek to] recover parts of the national memory that had hitherto been officially ignored.”
Theresa
I appreciate that the four truth approach emphasizes personal stories. It helps usher untold stories into public awareness. And I think it requires story stewardship—an approach that honors stories as sacred (see Brown, 2021).
Christina
Theresa, personal stories are powerful. And for some victims it may have been cathartic to tell their stories, whereas for others it must’ve been traumatic. Telling others about your trauma can lead to retraumatization. Is it fair to ask this of survivors—to do all this emotional labor, to relive all that pain?
Theresa
Yeah. There’s a fine line here. Society needs to know what happened. Individually and collectively, we need a dead-on accurate assessment of reality. Personal stories provide direct evidence of people’s lived experiences. The challenge for interpreters—and for everyone in society—is to weave the sum and substance of all these stories into a cohesive, integrated whole. That’s how we get to social truth.
Christina
The other day, I listened to the Retrievals podcast—it’s a 5-part podcast that the New York Times just released. They talked about a nurse at a Yale fertility clinic who was an addict. She siphoned off the fentanyl used for surgeries and swapped it with saline solution. For the trial, the victims wrote letters about going through their procedures without anesthetic. It was agonizing. They were so angry. I wondered, does this kind of sharing harness the healing potential of stories?
An NPS ranger speaks to a survivor at the Port Chicago Memorial Commemoration in 2011.
Theresa
What I hear you asking is, “How can we activate the healing potential of story without retraumatizing those who suffered harm?”
Christina
Yes, and the TRC report quotes Judge Albie Sachs who said, “…social truth [is] the truth of experience that is established through interaction, discussion, and debate.” In their efforts to transcend the divisions of the past, the TRC “made a conscious effort to provide an environment in which all possible views could be considered and weighed, one against the other.” I mean, yikes! If sharing painful personal stories can be retraumatizing, how much more trauma would ensue if your story were held up, weighed, assessed, and maybe found lacking? Who wants their story pitted against other people’s stories?
Theresa
I’m so glad we’re talking about this, Christina. An important goal of the four truth approach is to activate the healing potential of stories. They tried to create an environment where people could share painful stories and feel listened to and validated. That process could foster individual healing. But for society to heal, we need to understand the systems that produced these harms, and that’s the essence of an honest WE story.
Christina
So, you’re saying that if we want social truth to exist in our world, we need to interrogate the grand narratives that we’ve told ourselves about what kind of people we are and what kind of society we’ve built?
Theresa
Yes, indeed. Lisa Overholser is a folklorist. She talks about the importance of redescription. It’s a process that forces us to reexamine the language we use to convey what we value and how we function as a people.
Christina
I think the language we use to articulate our shared aspirations, for example, can become trite. We say we value freedom, justice, or equity, but these words can start to feel more calcified and less resonant over time.
Theresa
And sometimes, the way we think the world works doesn’t square with the situation that confronts us. When that happens, heritage interpreters can and should engage in a form of truth telling called redescription.
National Park Service staff and artist Sonja Griffin Evans gather around her painting to celebrate the anniversary of the 2017 establishment of the Reconstruction Era National Monument (now the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park). Photo credit NPS.
Healing Truth
When healing happens, it’s because we created an ALL OF US story.
Christina
Ideally, the process of redescription would engage a broad cross-section of stakeholders. For example, community members might come together to redefine what freedom means in a specific context. And this redescription work could set the stage for healing truth to emerge.
Theresa
You know, what we’re talking about in this conversation will be pushing the field. I mean, the TRC recognized the healing potential of stories for individuals, but their overriding interest was in system-level healing.
Christina
I’ve wondered, can our efforts really facilitate system-level healing? Then I pause and reflect. I remind myself that even simple acts, like acknowledging past injustice, can create an environment that’s conducive to healing on multiple levels.
Theresa
Christina, the High Desert Museum identified a powerful way to center Native voices in the collection process, right? Historically, museums collected objects from Indigenous people and squirreled them away in storage vaults. Often, these objects never again saw the light of day. To flip the script, you commissioned Indigenous artists to produce six works of art…
Linguist, artist, and storyteller Jefferson Greene (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs) is paddling the tule reed canoe he made for the Creations of Spirit exhibit. Photo credit NPS.
Rethinking Museum Collections: Creations of Spirit
Highlighting the relationship between cultural items made by Indigenous artists and contemporary communities, a text panel at the High Desert Museum’s Creations of Spirit (2023) exhibit explains:
The relationship between museums and Indigenous people is complicated. Cultural items at museums hold the spirit of the makers, who are the ancestors of living Native people. Museum practices, however, often separate these items from their purpose and communities.
The High Desert Museum is working closely with Plateau knowledge holders to change how we care for and interpret cultural items. New practices are helping to honor the meanings items hold for Plateau people. They are also creating opportunities for renewed connection.
Creations of Spirit grew from this work. It is helping us rethink our role with cultural items and how we can center Indigenous voices. We are deeply grateful to our partners in this journey and realize we have more to learn and do.
Artwork in the exhibit is part of these ongoing collaborations. Six artists, including Phillip Cash Cash, Ph.D. (Cayuse, Nez Perce), Joe Feddersen (Colville), Jefferson Greene (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs), Natalie Kirk (Warm Springs), Roberta Kirk (Wasco, Warm Springs, Diné), and Kelli Palmer (Wasco, Warm Springs), created the works for use in Museum exhibits and programs and in communities.
Community members will use these items to gather roots, engage in ceremonies, and teach future generations, ensuring that they will remain tied to the communities and purposes that shaped them. As a result, these items will collect new stories and marks of use that will educate Museum visitors about contemporary Plateau cultures.
The basket the acclaimed artist Joe Feddersen (Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation) created for the Creations of Spirit exhibit is not meant to solely exist in a museum. It has a purpose, to harvest roots in the spring.
Christina
Yes, that was our Creations of Spirit exhibit (see the textbox and link at the end of the article to learn more). Indigenous artists created objects like a flute, a tule reed canoe, or a root bag. These items are displayed in our museum, but per our arrangement with the artists, the objects can be borrowed by specific people within the community. How many museums commission a tule reed canoe and then say, you can pick it up at the museum and take it out on the water?
Theresa
Wow! The artist maintains their cultural traditions while earning a livelihood. The objects are imbued with the lives of their makers, and they also have a life of their own. Christina, you said the root bag came back to the museum with dirt on it. The artist said, “Don’t wipe the dirt off. It’s supposed to show signs of use.” To me, this is a picture of what healing and restoration look like.
For More Information
Brown, Brené. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. New York: Random House, 2021.
TEDxGatewayArch. “Theresa Coble: Grieving Difficult History: There’s a Place for That.” Streamed 27 Oct. 2017. YouTube video, 12:53. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME8fresK5cc
High Desert Museum. Creations of Spirit. Bend, Oregon. 2023. https://highdesertmuseum.org/creations-of-spirit/
South Africa. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report: Vol. 1. The Commission, 29 Oct. 1998. https://hmcwordpress.humanities.mcmaster.ca/Truthcommissions/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SouthAfrica.TRC_.Report-FULL.pdf
