From palava huts to TikTok: How Liberians are preserving their past

Monrovia, Liberia – For generations, Liberia’s history lived in the voices of its elders, carried through conversations, ceremonies and community gatherings.Today, those stories are finding new audiences across TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, podcasts and digital archives.Young Liberians are documenting their history, exploring their culture and reaching audiences at home and across the diaspora. Rather than replacing traditional storytellers, they are carrying an age-old tradition into the digital age.Across much of West Africa, griots, or oral historians, preserved history through storytelling, music and oral tradition. Liberia never developed the formal griot tradition found across the Sahel, but its elders fulfilled a similar role, preserving family histories, cultural traditions and the stories that bound communities together.Over time, however, that tradition has come under growing pressure.Among those leading efforts to preserve Liberia’s past is Bilphena Decontee Yahwon, founder of Archive Liberia, a memory and political education project that explores Liberian history through research, archives and public storytelling.“I didn’t originally set out to tell Liberian stories. I wan...