On Teaching Human Rights History in a Settler Colonial Context

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on several years of experience in teaching human rights history to undergraduate students in Canada, this article reflects on the challenges involved in imparting knowledge on this subject in a settler colonial context. It builds on examples gleaned from working with undergraduate students, from scholarship on the history of settler colonialism, as well as from Indigenous worldviews and epistemologies, to consider the ways in which the teaching of human rights history needs to evolve alongside and in dialogue with contemporary discussions about rights and justice. The article contends that given contemporary discussions around rights, which reveal the fragility of the liberal human rights framework, this is urgent and necessary work. It concludes by offerings ways of approaching student experiences, insider/outsider dynamics, and contemporary debates when teaching human rights history. The overall purpose of the article is to resituate the teaching of human rights history in a critical, self-reflective manner. In this way, the damaging implications of certain progress-oriented historical narratives centering on the idea and evolution of human rights can also be considered in pedagogical practices on the subject.