Teaching the Past for a Better Future
Posted by Jessica Chandra...
8 April 2014 - 11:33am
8 April 2014 - 11:33am
It was my pleasure to attend the Understanding Atrocities: Remembering, Representing and
Teaching Genocide conference hosted by Mount Royal University from February 19-21, 2014.
The prevention of atrocity and genocide in the future was firmly grounded in an historical framework.The
speakers represented a wide variety of stakeholders, including academics, activists and survivors, who are invested in the prevention and understanding of the complexities of genocide. Ensuring that history is not disassociated from the present was an important theme and teaching tool that I took away from the conference. History cannot be understood as static or monolithic. Conference presenters each shared different ways of reading history through a variety of entry points and perspectives. This opened up a productive space for irreconcilable, sometimes controversial, more nuanced ways of teaching about genocide.
A particularly interesting discussion came out of one of the first plenary panels titled
“The gross and systemic human rights violation of Indigenous peoples: but is it genocide and
does this matter?” The panelists agreed that naming the colonization of the Americas and
institutions such as the residential schools system as genocide was important. However, there
was some disagreement from the audience as to whether the UN Convention on Genocide applies to
atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples. This provoked an important discussion
between audience members and the panelists about the historiography of the term 'genocide'
itself. It was pointed out that the term 'genocide', as coined by Raphael Lemkin and later
defined in the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, was a political shift. Furthermore, the
discussion illustrated the politicization of history and how the histories of colonization have been
denied and erased. The panelists and audience members pointed out that recognition and
acknowledgement of atrocity and the genocide of Indigenous peoples is not only important for
more nuanced understandings of genocide, but is also vital to the healing of Indigenous
communities who have been denied personhood through historical denial.
The denial of history and the framing of the violences of the past is important to my own
work on post-war Sri Lanka. I presented a paper which analyzed the testimonies made to the
Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), a domestic Sri Lankan government-
organized Truth Commission. The opening statements made by the LLRC commissioners are
illustrative of the ways in which the state understands the historical experiences of Tamils living
in the Northern Province where the majority of the war took place. When these opening
statements are compared to the testimonies made by Tamils who survived the war, it is apparent
that the framing of atrocity is directly connected to a survivor’s sense of self and humanity
within a post-war state. As I learned from other panelists who presented work from a wide range
of sites and time periods, the framing of past violence is vital to building a peaceful present and
future.
The Understanding Atrocities conference showed that the past lives with us and shapes
the present. Atrocity and genocide challenge chronological ways of thinking about time and
disrupts the progression between the past, present and future. While the categories of victim and
perpetrator are at times complicated, for those who lived through or are descendants of genocide,
the conference at Mount Royal showed that past atrocities live in the present. Therefore, teaching
about histories of genocide and atrocity is really about learning about the present. The past
informs the present and remembering and learning about the past will undoubtedly shape
our future.
How do you teach about difficult histories in your history lessons?
