Abstract
In “Decolonizing Ways of Knowing: Heritage, Living Communities, and Indigenous Understandings of Place”, we build on the scholarly and artistic practice of deep memory work to present a collection of articles, films, and artwork that contribute critical genealogies from the United States, Africa, and the South Pacific. In this introduction, examples from Antoinette Jackson’s work in the American South and Rachel Breunlin’s work with the Neighborhood Story Project in New Orleans and Western Australia are used to build the special issue’s framework around public scholarship and art. With a particular emphasis on polyvocality, visual ethnography and creative nonfiction, the introduction argues that the work of decolonizing genealogy can be supported by respecting epistemologies that are deeply connected to place. Collectively, the contributors to the special issue demonstrate that creative practices around personal and collective histories can be an important way of reconnecting ties that may have been severed during years of colonialism.
Highlights
Understandings of Place”, we build on the scholarly and artistic practice of deep memory work to present a collection of articles, films, and artwork that contribute critical genealogies from the United
If genealogy is a pathway to our collective pasts, how can we use it as a tool to support the ongoing work of decolonization? As families have been both displaced and created during periods of colonization, how do Indigenous communities hold onto their own genealogies, which are often intimately connected to place? At the same time, how do we interrogate dominant narratives of the past that erase other histories to develop a cross-cultural, ethical approach to genealogical research?
When Antoinette Jackson and I envisioned “Decolonizing Ways of Knowing,” we aimed to facilitate an international conversation about how living communities interact with their ancestors and confront the legacies of colonialism through deep “memory work.”
Summary
If genealogy is a pathway to our collective pasts, how can we use it as a tool to support the ongoing work of decolonization? As families have been both displaced and created during periods of colonization, how do Indigenous communities hold onto their own genealogies, which are often intimately connected to place? At the same time, how do we interrogate dominant narratives of the past that erase other histories to develop a cross-cultural, ethical approach to genealogical research?. In the middle of the display, he placed a stuffed doll of a Black woman dressed to work in a white family’s home. 11-year-old son, Max, what kind of sign he wanted to contribute to a protest that was planned at the central plaza of New Orleans—just a short walk from the Mississippi River He said he would draw the Black Power symbol of a fist raised in the air to show support for Black strength and leadership. At the protest, he stood next to a masked man in a baseball cap who held up a sign with a picture of Trayvon Martin (1995–2012), a Black high school student who was shot and killed by the neighborhood watch captain of his father’s gated townhome community in Florida after he called 911 to report that the young man looked suspicious walking in the rain in a “dark hoodie” (Coates 2013).
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