Oral History, Education, and Justice Possibilities and Limitations for Redress and Reconciliation

This book addresses oral history as a form of education for redress and reconciliation. It provides scholarship that troubles both the possibilities and limitations of oral history in relation to the pedagogical and curricular redress of historical harms. Contributing authors compel the reader to question what oral history calls them to do, as citizens, activists, teachers, or historians, in moving towards just relations. Highlighting the link between justice and public education through oral history, chapters explore how oral histories question pedagogical and curricular harms, and how they shed light on what is excluded or made invisible in public education.

The authors speak to oral history as a hopeful and important pedagogy for addressing difficult knowledge, exploring significant questions such as: how do community-based oral history projects affect historical memory of the public? What do we learn from oral history in government systems of justice versus in the political struggles of non-governmental organizations? What is the burden of collective remembering and how does oral history implicate people in the past? How are oral histories about difficult knowledge represented in curriculum, from digital storytelling and literature to environmental and treaty education?

This book presents oral history as a form of education that can facilitate redress and reconciliation in the face of challenges, and bring about an awareness of historical knowledge to support action that addresses legacies of harm. Furthering the field on oral history and education, this work will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of social justice education, oral history, Indigenous education, curriculum studies, history of education, and social studies education.

Introduction: Oral History and Education: Hopes for Addressing Redress and Reconciliation

Kristina R. Llewellyn, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook

Section 1: Public Pedagogy, Memory, and Redress

Chapter 1: Re-Storying and Restoring Pacific Canada: Alternative Pasts for a Changing Present

Henry Yu, Sarah Ling, Denise Fong

Chapter 2: Witnessing Exclusion: Oral Histories, Historical Provenance and Antiracism Education

Timothy J. Stanley

Chapter 3: Justice Sang the Adaawk: Restor(y)ing Historical Consciousness

Aparna Mishra Tarc

Chapter 4: The Power of Silence: Personal Memories and Historical Consciousness in Experiences of Racism in Canada

Pamela Sugiman

Chapter 5: Cracks in the Foundation: (Re)Storying Settler Colonialism

Jennifer A. Tupper

Section 2: Unsettling Pedagogies, Curriculum, and Reconciliation

Chapter 6: Restorying Settler Teacher Education: Truth, Reconciliation, and Oral History

Kiera Brant-Birioukov, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Kristina R. Llewellyn

Chapter 7: What Does it Mean to Story our Shared Historical Present? The Difficult Work of Receiving Residential School Survivor Testimony as Bequest

Lisa K. Taylor

Chapter 8: The Teacher’s Call to Act Beyond Childhood Innocence: Picturing Reparation in Shi-shi-etko and Shin-Chi’s Canoe

Lisa Farley, Tasha Henry

Chapter 9: Restorying South Africa: A Digital Storytelling Praxis for Developing Historically Conscious Teachers

Kristian Stewart

Chapter 10: Developing Curriculum through Engaging Oral Stories: A Pedagogy for Reconciliation and Eco-Justice-Oriented Education

Dan Roronhiakewen Longboat, Andrejs Kulnieks, Kelly Young

Kristina R. Llewellyn is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Development Studies at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is a Professor of Curriculum Theory and the Director of the Teacher Education program at the University of Ottawa, Canada.