Reparatory History
One space for hope lies in the potential for the digital-spatial humanities to become a terrain for reparatory (or reparative) work. Our use of this term draws on feminist historian Catherine Hall’s (2018) writing on “doing reparatory history.” Drawing on her research on the histories of ‘race’, gender, class, and the slavery business in Britain, Hall invites humanities scholars to consider how – or whether – critical historical writing in the context can contribute to broader discussion of reparation as a process the converges theory and practice (or “praxis). These processes of repair are situated in and vary across place, and involve re-orienting historical inquiry to more critically examine the roots, rather than only the sites or objects, of harm. They also involve deeper reflection of responsibility by the people who have inherited and continue to benefit from “gross inequalities” of, for example, slavery and colonialism (Hall, 2018), which should also mobilize action, as we discuss later.
It is important to pause here and offer a reminder that calling something reparatory, or reconciliatory, does not necessarily make it so. Reparatory historical work might lead to reparations (in the sense of compensation) or other forms of redress, repatriation, or decolonization, but it cannot only be defined by individual events or outcomes. Indeed, reparatory research is a process that involves ongoing practices; it is never truly final. One example is Indigenous-settler relations in Canada, which has most notably been documented through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015). The term “reconciliation” is perhaps one extension of a reparatory approach, but it is important to note, as many Indigenous scholars, activists, elders, and community members have pointed out, that reconciliation is not possible without acknowledgement of the prior word – truth. To repair something first requires acknowledging truth of a damaged relationship, including harm, struggle, and uncomfortable histories. Although this process has occurred in some spaces across Canada, it has not been fulfilled to a point where reconciliation, as a reparatory approach, feels within reach.
Reparatory thinking also goes beyond the exposing of harmful action, as Hall explains,
Reparatory history must be about more than identifying wrongdoers and seeking redress: it begins with the descendants, with trauma and loss, but the hope is that the work of mourning can be linked to hopes for reconciliation, the repair of relations damaged by historical injustice (2018: 12)
As we gather from Hall’s words, the hope that lies in reparatory approaches does not exist purely as a positive or joyful form, nor does it necessarily produce any concrete conclusion of something being “fixed.” Rather, it involves creating space for different layers of emotion, including mourning and anger, as well as multi-layered stories, identities, experiences, and knowledges that have previously been pushed to the margins as a result of historical injustice.
There are many tools that might enable digital humanities scholars to “hold space” for the kinds of hopeful stories that contribute to reparatory history projects. In this course, we have considered how geospatial approaches used in the digital and spatial humanities, such as historical GIS and creative geovisualization, offer alternative ways of telling spatial stories about the past. This includes using geospatial technologies to turn the lens back on the complicated disciplinary histories that spawned them, and to reckon with these colonial inheritances as historians, geographers, writers, curators, or artists. We have demonstrated that reflexive, critical geospatial approaches, such as historical-GIS, can create transformative spaces through which to identify the uneven historical geographies of injustice (for example, in storymapping dispossession, environmental degradation, or spatialities and temporalities of enslavement). As we also noted in the counter-mapping module, however, geospatial approaches to injustice require great care to avoid reproducing harmful power systems that can become embedded in the research if done uncritically.
Many of the examples used throughout the course have highlighted the potential for geospatial approaches to facilitate reparatory work, including those coming out of the Centre for Understanding Semi-Peripheries (CUSP) at Nipissing University. Extending Hall’s ideas in a blog post about historical GIS as reparatory environmental history, historical geographer and CUSP director, Kirsten Greer, writes about this potential in the context of some of the HGIS storymaps spotlighted throughout this course.
…I think one of the most powerful outcomes of using HGIS is in the potential to re-assemble (in part) the British North Atlantic “archive” through the historical-socio-biophysical-ecological processes that shaped a region, including the shared histories of colonialism, as well as the histories of “mobile natures” (i.e. migrant animals, ocean currents, hurricanes).
Greer’s identification of re-assemblage as part of reparatory praxis is important for spatial humanities scholars. Assemblage, after all, is also spatial process of identifying and making relationships between different entities (e.g., living beings, materialities, places, knowledges, networks). Re-assembling archives, in this case using HGIS to “re-place” the British North Atlantic archive, is an important act re-spatializing and possibly decolonizing colonial spaces of historical knowledge production.
She reflects on the utility of HGIS as a critical research tool to create more inclusive spaces of storytelling and story listening:
using HGIS as a relational tool critically and with care… serves as an important avenue to connect to the research process, and to build conversations across multiple audiences (i.e. researchers, partners, public).
HGIS therefore facilitates the reimagining of the actors involved in historical and geographical storytelling. As we have discussed in previous modules, the convergence of geospatial, artistic, and digital humanities technologies and knowledges blurs the boundaries of “audience,” “storyteller,” “archivist,” “cartographer,” and “researcher,” among many other kinds of subjectivities. This question of who or what can be an actor in spatial storytelling also leads to more robust possibilities for action.
Action-oriented storytelling
Nipissing University’s Centre for Understanding Semi-Peripheries, in connection with the Repatriation and Digitization (RAD) Lab (also led by Greer), is guided by an attempt to build reparatory praxis into all aspects of the research process. A reparatory approach in this regard recognizes that repair is not only an outcome; it is also a methodology. This has involved prioritizing relationship-building through a formal place-based partnership with the communities most deeply affected by the stories investigated and told through historical-geographical research on Anishinaabeg territory. The ongoing creation of storymaps and other geospatial histories that document land encroachment, resource extraction, cultural and ancestral relations, and arts-based engagement with land, could not be done without the leadership, reciprocity, insight, and work of Anishinaabeg collaborators from Dokis and Nipissing First Nations.
Action is a crucial part of reparatory work, and often involves community-oriented research. The emerging fields like “public history” and “community geographies” highlights a shift toward action-oriented research that is led by, or done in careful relationship with, the communities at the heart of the topics explored in humanities and social inquiry (see Shannon et al., 2020). Many of the projects shown throughout this course have incorporated some form of community-based, as well as action-oriented, research. This includes doing collaborative research on Indigenous and settler colonial histories of Robinson Huron Treaty territory as a response to the TRC’s “Calls to Action,” but it is also intended as a launching point for other forms of action, such as future land (re-)claims, language revitalization, or community-centred healing.
In the context of geospatial storytelling, community-based research often involves what Boll-Bosse and Hankins (2017) call “participatory action mapping” in which community-designed maps (made in collaboration with GIS practitioners) are used to mobilize action around a particular issue, often in response to social or environmental injustice. Community-oriented participatory action mapping is aligned with the recent uptake in participatory GIS (PGIS) or public participatory GIS (PPGIS), often referred to as PGIS (Dunn, 2007), as well as collaborative cartography (Bosse, 2021) all of which can incorporate elements of counter-mapping, re-mapping, and un-mapping discussed in previous modules.
As we have discussed at different points in the course, as well as above, digital relationships give rise to expanded interpretations of the actors involved in digital and spatial humanities storytelling. It is perhaps futile to try to separate entities into distinct categories of stories, storytellers, audiences, actors, data, information, interfaces, or machines. Recognizing the inter-relational connections between sentient beings, hardware, software, and the many other materialities of a digitally-informed world, requires a shift in thinking about “webs of care.”