Liana Macdonald: Uncanny pedagogies: teaching difficult histories at sites of colonial violence

In this episode CSE speaks with Dr Liana Macdonald from Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. Her paper with Dr Joanna Kidman, Uncanny pedagogies: teaching difficult histories at sites of colonial violence, was published in Critical Studies in Education Issue 1 for 2022. In that paper, they introduce the notion of a settler colonial crypt to show how settler memory and forgetting of colonial violence can be challenged and transformed by Māori tribal memories. The introduction of difficult histories at sites of colonial violence is accompanied by the uncanny; intellectual, emotional and embodied experiences that are uncomfortable and frightening, yet stimulating and inspiring, to generate new ways of considering settler-Indigenous relations. Data from a large-scale ethnographic study exploring how different groups in New Zealand remember or forget the New Zealand Wars reveal how secondary school students were directed towards the uncanny during a field trip. The excursion demonstrates the potential for transforming understandings about how invasion and violence accompanied settlement, providing the impetus for something-to-be-done and setting the groundwork for genuine attempts at reconciliation. MacDonald, L., & Kidman, J. (2021). Uncanny pedagogies: teaching difficult histories at sites of colonial violence. Critical Studies in Education, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2021.1923543

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