The Reparative Materials and Possibilities Embedded within Slavery Heritage Sites

• In Event: Reparative Educational Futures: Reimagining Futures through Historical Consciousness and Anti-Colonial Praxis

Abstract

This paper, grounded in reparative futures of education framework, investigates the theoretical and practical usefulness of historical and structural consciousness relative to the Transatlantic slave trade (TST) and slavery to envisioning a just future. The reparative futures of education framework contends that education needs to be grounded in structural competencies. Historical injustices of the past accumulate into the present and are projected into the future through societal structures, systems, institutions and processes (Myers et al., 2024; Paulson, 2025; Ray, 2019). Although the effects of such structural injustice (e.g., slavery, colonial, and racial oppression) may be embodied and activated through interpersonal relations, the individual actors may be implicated subjects playing differentiated mediational roles (Carter, 2018; Rothberg, 2019; Saboro, 2022; Sriprakash et al., 2022). Historical and structural competencies in the colonial racial construction of our shared humanity on a hierarchy-based design for exploitation in the service of colonial and racial capital state can enhance an understanding of our collective but differentiated implications in the (re)production of injustice (Engmann, 2019; Rothberg, 2019; Young, 2011). This understanding in turn provides us with lessons and pathways to imagine a reconstruction that is reparative. Slavery heritage sites are geography of memory constitutive of both individual and collective culture and identity that can help us understand our implications in the past injustices (Klien, 2017; McKinnon et al., 2016). In Ghana, the edifices and the experiential nature of the slave dungeons can enhance the generation of epistemic and affective materials towards critical and transformative skills and social justice orientation (Engmann & Engmann, 2023; Savenije et al., 2014).

Method: The current study analyzes pilot data exploring the reparative possibilities of two slave heritage sites in Ghana (Elmina and Cape Coast slave dungeons) which are known as the UNESCO heritage sites. Participants (N=11, mean age, 22.3, SD= 2.75, 55% male, 45% female) were undergraduate, Ghanaian students at the University of Cape Coast. Focus group discussions around how slavery heritage fosters an understanding of the past in the present to position us toward a reparative future.

Findings: Critical and experiential engagement with slavery heritage sites provide access to narratives to enhance an understanding of the present circumstances that are marked by persistent inequalities. Secondly, slavery heritage sites are generative of social justice ideas to direct repair and healing toward a reparative future. Thirdly, from a social identity perspective, slavery heritage sites are embedded with contents and materials that can facilitate identity (re)configuration, which is important to engender repair and healing from traumatic memories that implicate us in the (re)production of culturally harmful practices and inequalities.

Conclusion: Education that exposes students in colonized contexts to the structural factors of their lived experiences fosters reparative identity and provides them with the epistemic and affective resources for interrogating and disrupting the broader historical and their evolving social, economic and political structures that shape their realities. Implication for educational research and practices will be discussed

Author

• Eric Kyere, Indiana University