Cementing Settler History Through Cartographies: How Preservice Teachers Read the Colonial City-Text

• In Event: 43.008 - "When Alternative Facts Are Birthed in a Colonial Womb": Native American and Indigenous Uncementing Settler Histories

Abstract

This project seeks to explore how pre-service teachers make sense of what critical geographer Maoz Azaryahu (1990) calls the “city-text” – historical remembrance as it occurs through the toponymy (place-naming) of a community – and how such an encounter with the street naming of a community can serve to disrupt and/or bring into consciousness the often invisible settler-colonial re-making of space. Through an engagement with a web based application – Topomapper – that allows users to learn about the person/event commemorated through the street names of a small Australian city, the project focuses on how pre-service teachers draw connections, build narratives and speak back to (or reflect) the settler-historical geographies that are normalized in everyday place-naming practices.

Author

• Bryan Smith, James Cook University - Australia