If you are interested in being interviewed and having your life story included in the Sikh LGBTQIA+ Archive, we are so excited to (potentially) interview you! Anyone who we interview will be included in the Archive as long as they are eligible (please see eligibility requirement below). Those who are interviewed can choose how they want to share their life story in the Archive (for example, via audio, transcript, and/or other materials).
Before contacting us, please review the eligibility guide below. If, after reviewing it you are eligible or have any other questions around safety or privacy, then please reach out via the contact page. We are more than happy to answer any questions you may have! Once we receive your contact form, we will be in touch with the next steps.
CURRENT INTERVIEWING STATUS:
NOT CONDUCTING NEW INTERVIEWS
1. Eligibility requirements
The Project focuses on the history of Sikh LGBTQIA+ adults (at least 18 years of age) of any descent who spent formative years in California. The Project is focused on California for now, but this includes people who had formative experiences based in CA and may live somewhere else right now. Similarly, if you lived or grew up somewhere else but now live in California, you are eligible.
We highly encourage and want to extend a special invitation to those most marginalized in the Sikh kaum (ਕੌਮ), such as on the basis of racism, casteism, gender and sexuality (biological dimorphism, the patriarchal and cisheterosexist organizations of relations), capitalism, documentation, and ability. We do not wish to further erase your place in the kaum and are happy to work with you to ensure your safety and comfort through this experience.
While we know there are important life histories outside of California, our resources and labor are limited at this moment. We hope to one day interview Sikhs outside of this narrowed context.
In the meantime, if you are interested in creating an oral history archive for your own local community of LGBTQIA+ Sikhs, feel free to reach out for questions through the contact page and review the resources page.
2. What to expect?
If you agree to be interviewed, you can expect the following typical process:
Option 1: A 90-120 minute formal interview or
Option 2: One 30-minute pre-interview and a formal interview. We use the pre-interview to get to know each other and answer any questions you may have. We also use the pre-interview to collaboratively figure out what type of conversations you would like to have in the formal interview.
Participants will be compensated $100 for their time for a formal interview through a gift card and $150 if they completed a pre-interview and formal interview.
Interviews will be conducted virtually or, if possible, in-person.
Our interviewees’ (narrators’) privacy and security is of utmost priority. We are happy to share more about how we are protecting interviewee data and identity for anyone who has questions. Some of this is available on our frequently asked questions page and in number 4 further down this page.
3. What will we talk about in the interviews?
We hope to learn more about all of the different ways that LGBTQIA+ Sikhs understand themselves and how this may have changed throughout their lives. Narrators get to decide the direction of the interview but some common topics have been experiences with growing up Sikh in the U.S.; navigating being of a migrant-descendent community in the U.S.; and/or negotiating boundaries of gender and sexuality while in different ethnic, political, and religious spaces.
4. Will this project be made public?
After the interviews are completed, they will be made publicly available on this website where others can listen, read, and learn.
That said, the Project team takes safety and privacy concerns seriously. While you will be able to choose a pseudonym for yourself, we also have multiple measures available to address individuals’ data privacy and identity concerns. For instance, those who do not want to share the audio recording of their interviews may choose to only share an edited version of their interview’s transcript. We are happy to share this information and other practices with folks directly, discuss this further in the pre-interview, and share a copy of the informed consent document.
5. Why are you doing this project?
The histories, experiences, and personal reflections of LGBTQIA+ Sikhs living in the United States have been largely undocumented or erased. This Archive will document the stories of LGBTQIA+ Sikhs through a series of interviews, with the purpose of (1) creating space for LGBTQIA+ Sikhs to reflect upon and narrate their lived experiences and (2) providing a more complete picture of LGBTQIA+ Sikh history in the United States.
