ERIC Number: EJ1070879
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1191-162X
EISSN: N/A
Unsettling Our Narrative Encounters within and outside of Canadian Social Studies
Ng-A-Fook, Nicholas; Milne, Robin
Canadian Social Studies, v47 n2 p88-109 2014
In 2007, Indian Residential School System (IRS) survivors won a class action settlement worth an?estimated 2 billion dollars from the Canadian Government. The settlement also included the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Despite the public acknowledgement, we posit that there is still a lack of opportunity and the necessary historical knowledge to address the intergenerational impacts of the IRS system in Ontario's social studies classrooms. In this essay we therefore ask: How might we learn to reread and rewrite the individual and collective narratives that constitute Canadian history? In response to such curriculum inquiries, we lean upon the work of Roger Simon to reread and rewrite historical narratives as shadow texts. For us, life writing as shadow texts, as "?currere," enables us to revisit the past as a practice of unsettling the present, toward reimagining more hopeful future relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities across the territories we now call Canada. As Simon's life-long scholarly commitments make clear in this essay, the onus lies with those present to teach against the grain so that we might encounter each other's unsettling historical traumas with compassion, knowledge, and justice.
Descriptors: Social Studies, Teaching Methods, History, American Indians, Court Litigation, Foreign Countries, Personal Narratives, Historiography, Ethics, American Indian History, Foreign Policy, Residential Schools, American Indian Education, Biographies
University of Alberta. 347 Education South, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G5, Canada. Web site: http://www2.education.ualberta.ca/css/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A