Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives, and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to a written work (published or unpublished) based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries.

The term is sometimes used in a more general sense to refer to any information about past events that people who experienced them tell anybody else, but professional historians usually consider this to be oral tradition. However, as the Columbia Encyclopedia explains:

Primitive societies have long relied on oral tradition to preserve a record of the past in the absence of written histories. In Western society, the use of oral material goes back to the early Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, both of whom made extensive use of oral reports from witnesses. The modern concept of oral history was developed in the 1940s by Allan Nevins and his associates at Columbia University.

Sitting Bull (Lakota: Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake in Standard Lakota Orthography, also nicknamed Slon-he or "Slow"; c. 1831 – December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man who led his people as a tribal chief during years of resistance to United States government policies. Born near the Grand River in Dakota Territory, he was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him and prevent him from supporting the Ghost Dance movement.

He had a premonition of defeating the cavalry, which motivated his Native American people to a major victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn against Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry on June 25, 1876. Months after the battle, Sitting Bull and his group left the United States to Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan, where he remained until 1881, at which time he surrendered to U.S. forces. A small remnant of his band under Chief Waŋblí Ǧí decided to stay at Wood Mountain. After his return to the United States, he briefly toured as a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, earning $50 a week.

Scott Michael Sellers (born August 16, 1986) is an American track and field athlete who holds records in the high jump. His clearance of 7-07.75 is currently 4th in NCAA history and 15th in U.S. history. As a high schooler, Sellers broke the national indoor record with a jump of 2.27m in Landover, Maryland. Sellers is currently attending Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.

Sellers won the 2007 Big 12 championships with a jump of 2.33m. This accomplishment is the fourth highest jump in NCAA history. Sellers followed up his performance by capturing the Midwest Regional title with a jump of 2.25m. Two weeks after winning a Regional title, Sellers became a Division I National Champion when he defeated a very talented field, jumping 2.32m on his second attempt.

In 2009, Sellers won gold in both the NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Championships. These two wins gave Sellers his 7th and 8th All-American honors in the same event, a feat accomplished by a select few in NCAA history.

At the end of 2009 Sellers was named the high school high jump athlete of the decade by ESPN and USAToday.

Gordon Muir Campbell, (born January 12, 1948) is a Canadian diplomat and politician, who is currently serving as Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He previously served as the 34th Premier of British Columbia from 2001 to 2011. A former real estate developer and teacher, Campbell's political career began as executive assistant to Vancouver Mayor Art Phillips until 1976. He worked as a development manager and developer until 1986, when he became the 35th Mayor of Vancouver. He was the leader of the British Columbia Liberal Party, which was re-elected for a third term on May 12, 2009 and which holds a majority in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.

Campbell was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. His father, Charles Gordon (Chargo) Campbell, was a doctor and an assistant dean of medicine at The University of British Columbia, until his suicide in 1961 when Gordon was 13. His mother Peg was a kindergarten assistant at University Hill Elementary School. Charles and his wife, Peg, had four children. Gordon grew up in West Point Grey and went to Stride Elementary, and University Hill Secondary School where he was student council president. While there he was accepted by Dartmouth College, an Ivy League institution in New Hampshire where he had received a scholarship and a job offer so he could afford fees.

George Stanley McGovern (born July 19, 1922) is a historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election.

McGovern grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he was a renowned debater. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Forces upon the country's entry into World War II and as a B-24 Liberator pilot flew 35 missions over German-occupied Europe. Among the medals awarded him was a Distinguished Flying Cross for making a hazardous emergency landing of his damaged plane and saving his crew. After the war he gained degrees from Dakota Wesleyan University and Northwestern University, culminating in a Ph.D, and was a history professor. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1956 and re-elected in 1958. After a failed bid for the U.S. Senate in 1960, he was elected there in 1962.

As a senator, McGovern was an exemplar of modern American liberalism. He became most known for his outspoken opposition to the growing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He staged a brief nomination run in the 1968 presidential election as a stand-in for the assassinated Robert F. Kennedy. The subsequent McGovern–Fraser Commission fundamentally altered the Democratic presidential nominating process, by greatly increasing the number of caucuses and primaries and reducing the influence of party insiders. The McGovern–Hatfield Amendment sought to end the Vietnam War by legislative means but was defeated in 1970 and 1971. McGovern's long-shot, grassroots-based 1972 presidential campaign found triumph in gaining the Democratic nomination but left the party badly split ideologically, and the failed vice-presidential pick of Thomas Eagleton undermined McGovern's credibility. In the general election McGovern lost to incumbent Richard Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in American history. Re-elected Senator in 1968 and 1974, McGovern was defeated in a bid for a fourth term in 1980.