Uncanny pedagogies: teaching difficult histories at sites of colonial violence

ABSTRACT In 2022, New Zealand history will shift from an optional to a compulsory subject across all levels of schooling. Teaching about New Zealand’s difficult histories has the potential to reconstitute settler-Indigenous relations to show how historical colonial injustice impacts people today, but it raises questions about whose history will be validated and taught and how settler discomfort about breaking the silences surrounding colonial violence might be addressed pedagogically. Building on scholarship in haunting, we 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.