Abstract
Oral History, Education, and Justice: Possibilities and Limitations for Redress and Reconciliation is a book edited by Kristina R. Llewellyn and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (2020) which connects theory to praxis for educators, historians, scholars, and activists teaching in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions. The book examines the limitations and possibilities of oral history as the oldest form of intergenerational knowledge. The editors contextualize oral histories and how these narratives can be mobilized for the purposes of Redress and Reconciliation to acknowledge and expose the perpetuating systems of colonialism in history and present-day Canada. The contributors to this ten chapter collection draws from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) report, community projects developed by minorities in Canada, as well as testimonies from genocide survivors in South Africa, citizens of the world and Canadian citizens who seek models for Redress and Reconciliation in Canada. The editors and authors are in agreement that movement from settler dominated narratives of history and toward collective and personal histories through witnessing oral stories democratizes history.
The first section of the book “Public pedagogy, memory and [R]edress” encourages the reader to tell “the story of telling the story.” In the first chapter, Henry Yu, Sarah Ling, and Denise Fong suggest that re-storying the history of Canada can create the “relational conditions” required for a more inclusive future. The story of Canadian settler history dominates history textbooks, though social studies classrooms have begun to discuss colonialism and its impacts. However, the relational stories continue to be silenced. In Chapter 2, Timothy Stanley documents how oral histories have been excluded from settler dominated accounts of history, particularly of Chinese and First Nation relationships in British Columbia, the Japanese Canadian Redress Movement, and the Chinese Canadian Head Tax Movement. He exposes the racism encountered by people in the past and present day to bring forward injustices.
Arguably one of the most powerful chapters, Chapter 3, written by Aparna Mishra Tarc, discusses the use of the adwaak, an oral story sung to communities to narrate people’s being with the land. Through the methodological lens of psychology, she describes a court case over land claims in British Columbia ultimately displaying the manifestation of a clash of two world views and the vehement display of discrimination, patriarchy, and systemic racism between a judge and an Indigenous woman. Chapter 4, presented by Pamela Sugiman, shares the experiences of Japanese internment camp survivors by collecting memories of Nisei (second-generation Japanese Canadians) and bystanders who witnessed the disappearance and displacement of Japanese families during the Second World War. Sugiman encourages readers to question the role of silence in public memory and how the silences in which oral history “unsilence” can offer a theoretical framework to examine how human experiences are structured. Chapter 5 ends this section with Jennifer Tupper’s idea of un-storying settler narratives through settler life writing, highlighting settler’s complicit and implicit role in colonialism and treaties by living on the land. She suggests settlers must be willing to relearn the historical contexts of treaties and re-story their own historical narratives. Oral histories, testimonies, and stories of marginalized voices are presented as cries for justice grounded in the hope that they will be heard by settlers in an ethical and transformative way.
Section 2 “Unsettling pedagogies, curriculum and reconciliation” describes for educators how an “ethics of listening” must be incorporated into the use of oral histories in the classroom. Chapter 6, by Kiera Brant-Birioukov, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, and Kristina Llewellyn, explains how oral histories, specifically of residential school survivors, can result in the listener and storyteller experiencing difficult emotions, but that this could, in turn, become a tool to discuss historical injustices. The authors also suggest that through positioning “listening as ceremony,” settlers can shift their understanding from a Eurocentric and colonial worldview to a worldview which sees intergenerational resilience over victimization and trauma which dominates settler colonial narratives of Canadian history. Lisa Taylor’s Chapter 7 describes how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) testimonies witnessed in person allowed for a “pedagogy of witness and remembrance” to be experienced by preservice teachers. Witnessing survivors’ stories consequently had an enduring impact on preservice teachers through accepting both the “guile and gift of storying historical consciousness” and hopefully activating the moral component of sharing the burden of remembering.
Chapter 8 discusses the picture books Shi-shi-etko and Shin-chi’s Canoe as an approach to encourage teachers to learn difficult knowledge to teach the students in their class. Lisa Farley and Tasha Henry explain how these picture books can “unsettle colonial fantasies of childhood innocence” since some stories censor trauma and “impede decolonizing pedagogies.” Exploring discomfort, segregation, and vulnerability as a tool in the classroom can foster efforts toward Reconciliation for people who have experienced trauma in the past and present. In Chapter 9, Kristian Stewart explains that Reconciliation is ongoing, as demonstrated in the South African context. Digital storytelling was used as a vehicle to explore aspects of preservice teacher identity, while in the process building bridges among different races within the class. The dual meaning of the word “class” creates a space and opportunity for pedagogical hope and personal transformation. In the last chapter, Dan Roronhiakewen Longboat, Andrejs Kulnieks, and Kelly Young put forward a framework called the 12 Rs which consists of reconciliation through relationship, respect, responsibility, reverence, resilience, reciprocity, restoration, resurgence, renewal, regeneration, revitalization, and remembrance. The framework looks at eco-justice which works to reconcile colonialism and the impact of colonialism on Mother Earth. If students are given the opportunity to learn how to tell stories and “re-present” their stories from a different worldview or perspective, the oral histories of Elders can guide inhabitants of the land to a more relational understanding of history and increase their Indigenous ecological knowledge. The path to bridge building and Reconciliation is through addressing the silencing and censorship of traumas in educators’ historical consciousness in the classroom.
This book displays and models what oral history can achieve for Redress and Reconciliation through public education. Understanding the difficulty of telling these stories and the importance of hearing and sharing the burden of oppression are key to allyship and social justice in the classroom.
