Pedagogies of Remembrance and “Doing Critical Heritage” in the Teaching of History: Counter-memorializing Canada 150 with Future Teachers

Abstract

This article argues that critical heritage studies has much to offer critical approaches to history education that are attentive to the profound challenges to settler colonial national narratives and memory politics occasioned by #Colonialism150 and the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action. The argument is grounded in a review of current debates over the status of Indigenous approaches to the past and memory-based historical accounts within competing movements in history education. If the “doing” of heritage is always contested and inherently pedagogical, this article traces the ways critical heritage studies expands the purview and vocabulary of educational explorations of contemporary memory politics in profoundly divided societies. This argument is illustrated through two examples of critical heritage practices: the national social media debate occasioned by Canada’s 2017 sesquicentennial celebrations in which dissonant publics unsettle and reconfigure state practices of imagining settler colonial temporalities and futurities; and an undergraduate secondary history education course focused on the production of counter-histories and counter-memorials to Canada 150.