RHI - Reparative Historical Inquiry

• In Event: Truth-Telling and Transformation: Critical, Reparative, and Community-Engaged Historical Methods Across Educational Contexts

Abstract

Academic disciplines are in various stages of decolonization and find themselves increasingly under attack for these efforts. As scholars engaged in decolonizing work in higher education continue to interrogate and challenge the legacies of colonialism, empire, and racism that shape the knowledge systems in which we educate learners, we must do so with an eye toward understanding the local histories of colonized knowledge.

This presentation introduces the concept of Reparative Historical Inquiry (RHI) as a methodology grounded in a commitment to the idea that the work of decolonization must include the voices of the people who have been harmed by colonization in its local expression. In essence, RHI represents a type of guerrilla history - history from the perspective of the people who Frantz Fanon called, “les damnés,” or “the wretched of the earth.” In doing so, RHI makes a case for the development of a reparative ethos to orient historians (and other scholars with strong pedagogical and methodological ties to history) working in colonial sites.

Presenters will share insights gleaned from the National REPAIR Network – a cohort of three Academic Health Centers (AHCs) (University of California at San Francisco, University of Kansas Medical Center, and Johns Hopkins University) who have all undertaken history-driven REPAIR (REParations and Anti-Institutional Racism) Projects, due to the fact that AHCs have been particularly slow to apply decolonization to its systems and praxis. REPAIR Projects are grounded in one question: How can AHCs repair the harms caused by centuries of neglect, exploitation and abuse of people of color in clinical encounters, and by biomedical systems of knowledge that have justified this mistreatment by propagating and upholding theories of race, racial difference, and racial inferiority? Community accountability is a foundational core of all REPAIR Projects, and this presentation outlines RHI as a framework for organizing historically driven community accountability efforts in post/colonial sites. RHI is intentional in its efforts to retain and reclaim marginalized histories for the central role that they play in decolonization and social justice.

Authors

• Aimee Medeiros, University of California - San Francisco

• Jason Glenn, University of Kansas Medical Center

• Norlissa Cooper, University of California - San Francisco