—
Active history is proud to present a video each week from New Directions in Active History. The conference took place at Huron University College on October 2-4, 2015 and brought together scholars, students, professionals and community members to discuss a wide range of topics pertaining to active history.
Completing the opening presentations is Keith Carlson, professor of History and Research Chair in Aboriginal Community- engaged History at the University of Saskatchewan. In this video, Carlson explores the meaning of “community engaged history” by carefully probing each term. He begins by expanding upon Peter Sexias’ ten principals or benchmarks of history. Carlson stresses the negative impact that “bad history” has on people’s lives and asserts that historians have the power to give voice to the oppressed through community engaged scholarship and projects. He explains that successful community projects occur when the activity, community needs and involvement, and benefits all inform one and other. Lastly, he confronts critics who argue that community engagement of any kind is inherently colonial in nature because it is predicated on the process of “othering” a peoples. Carlson argues that humility and knowing that histories are always incomplete and can always be made better in the future is what allows for the historian and a community to build trust.
—
—
Video Transcript
00:13
engage the line of these are the
00:19
practices of a new generation of our
00:21
needs our mission to conduct research
00:24
and analysis and partnership with
00:26
communities to procreate knowledge that
00:29
is locally meaningful and that will form
00:31
of a policy to boldly go where no miss
00:35
Orion has gone on record
00:37
I wanted to keep it a little bit light
00:44
at the beginning and we just had William
00:46
Shatner visit Saskatoon and my son went
00:49
and got an autograph for me which was
00:51
awesome thank you very much for having
00:54
me here today I really do appreciate it
00:56
it’s been wonderful getting to know sort
00:59
of active history of historians across
01:01
Canada through the website over the past
01:03
couple of years used to that bye bye Jim
01:06
thank you very much I am a today I want
01:10
to talk about the work I do is is
01:12
community based primarily in in First
01:14
Nations communities also i work in some
01:17
80 communities and and then also for
01:19
some nonprofit organizations and
01:21
heritage groups and what I want to talk
01:24
about is the way that we can engage and
01:27
what does engagement mean and I want to
01:29
talk a little bit about some of the the
01:31
debates that are currently going on
01:33
within the field of community engaged
01:34
scholarship has relates to historians
01:36
and then come up at the end I think with
01:38
sort of a bit of a rousing sort of call
01:42
to arms so I will start and I only have
01:45
20 minutes so I’m going to go fast I’m
01:48
doing something wrong though no just the
01:55
arrows right
02:02
okay it start over again no just okay so
02:07
what I want to do I want to approach
02:09
this by defining the three terms
02:10
community engaged history because I
02:13
think oftentimes we we do history
02:15
without thinking about what we’re doing
02:16
and and perhaps more often than that
02:19
people outside our discipline have
02:22
impressions about what historians do I
02:24
remember a thing that stuck in my mind I
02:26
don’t know how many of you can remember
02:27
book reviews you’ve read over the years
02:28
but there’s one book review from 1990
02:31
that stands out in my mind really
02:32
clearly it was Robin Fisher writing a
02:35
review of the Smithsonian handbook of
02:36
American Indians vol 7 north west coast
02:39
which had all these chapters each one
02:41
contributed by a different author and
02:43
two chapters in the book were explicitly
02:45
historical both of which were written by
02:47
anthropologists and Robin Fisher in his
02:50
review noted there’s still a pervasive
02:52
sense out there that anybody can do
02:54
history and I think that is the case and
02:57
I think as historians part of our job is
02:59
to explain that what we do isn’t just
03:02
describing the past so its history is
03:06
what his historians do right this is
03:08
when we think historically and there are
03:12
ten what I call benchmarks of history
03:14
some of you may know the wonderful
03:15
scholarship of Peter stacious he’s
03:17
identified six benchmarks of history I
03:19
added four more so there’d be the same
03:21
number that God had with the Ten
03:22
Commandments I thought that might be
03:24
good so if we think of it here history
03:27
is not the past of course or the study
03:29
of change over time as some people often
03:30
in the media / describe it nor is it the
03:33
study of events it’s it’s what we do
03:36
when we think historically and that
03:39
means that something incredibly powerful
03:40
so I’ve noted over the years that God
03:43
either can’t or won’t change history he
03:46
won’t change the past i should say but
03:47
historians they do and and that that
03:50
gives us an incredible amount of power
03:52
and we do that through historical
03:54
thinking and as a result we need to be
03:57
especially careful with what we do
03:58
because it has huge impacts it affects
04:01
people’s lives all around the world some
04:05
people some institutions certainly some
04:08
corporations have the power in the
04:10
capacity to write their own history but
04:13
there’s a huge number of people out
04:14
there
04:15
don’t and I think we have an obligation
04:17
to those people you can’t see what I’ve
04:19
got here but those corporations those
04:23
nation-states those powerful
04:24
institutions don’t always do good
04:26
history you you don’t need I don’t need
04:29
to I’m sure you can think of bad history
04:32
that’s being publicly shared around the
04:35
country right now and bad history is in
04:37
my view every bit as dangerous as bad
04:39
chemistry it is dangerous it affects
04:42
people it hurts people and we have to be
04:44
careful about how we do it so today in
04:47
the world for example there over seven
04:48
billion people who suffer from bad or
04:50
contested history over seven billion you
04:52
don’t hear about that in the news the
04:53
way you should right now that’s more
04:56
than the number of people suffer from
04:57
bad hygiene for example and that’s you
05:00
can laugh at that part but it’s also
05:02
right up there with the same number of
05:03
people in the world or just slightly
05:05
more perhaps and those who suffer from
05:06
difficult access to clean fresh healthy
05:09
water bad history comes from poor
05:13
historical thinking and we have a way to
05:15
change that we give voice to the
05:19
oppressed we give voice to the marginal
05:21
we bring their stories forward in a way
05:24
that they not can’t necessarily do it on
05:26
their own and there’s all sorts of
05:27
reasons that marginalized groups can’t
05:29
do it in some cases the marginalized
05:31
groups are simply gone for talking about
05:33
19th century labor class in England they
05:35
happened of all died they’re still
05:37
labourers today but that’s not
05:39
necessarily the community we’re talking
05:41
about we’re talking about a past
05:42
community that has links to the present
05:46
I’m going to go through the 10
05:47
principles kind of quickly because I
05:50
think they’re important and I don’t
05:51
think we talk about them enough one is
05:52
establishing significance why do we
05:55
study certain topics why do we make them
05:57
historical topics why do we begin to
05:58
research them we need to justify that
06:00
and part of that is speaking truth to
06:02
power I think second one is the the use
06:05
of primary sources whether those are
06:07
oral written archaeological artistic we
06:11
draw directly from our primary sources
06:13
we’re very interested in the role of
06:15
continuity and change in the
06:17
relationship to one another it’s not
06:18
just change over time but it’s how does
06:20
continuity and change interact what are
06:24
causes and what are consequences of
06:26
actions over time
06:27
as historians we take perspective race
06:31
class gender and we have an ethical
06:34
obligation to both our sources and to
06:36
the people that we discuss and describe
06:37
Dominic Lee cappers done some wonderful
06:39
work on this coming out of his research
06:42
with Holocaust survivors here’s the ones
06:46
that i’ve added though that i think are
06:47
important historic history is intensely
06:51
a product of interpretation and i’ve
06:53
talked to lots of people from different
06:54
disciplines who seem to think that what
06:56
historians do is what i would define as
06:58
an archivist job that is you know you
07:00
find and preserve and make available
07:01
documents but documents don’t speak for
07:03
themselves as we all know as historians
07:07
we use metaphor to communicate meaning
07:09
historians are the best metaphors next
07:11
to poets I’ve come to conclude right
07:13
poets are the best they’re wonderful
07:15
they can really make a metaphor work but
07:17
as historians we’re constantly having to
07:18
explain how the Battle of Passchendaele
07:20
was like hell right we use metaphors all
07:25
the time all the identities that we
07:28
talked about in the past are not fixed
07:30
somehow in some primal primordial
07:31
fashion they’re not inherent they’re all
07:33
built in relationships you can only be a
07:35
father if there’s such a thing you can
07:37
only be a parent there’s such a thing as
07:38
a child you can only be a teacher if
07:39
there are learner’s you can only be a
07:41
Canadian if there are non Canadians and
07:43
that means that every historical
07:44
identity that we deal with has to be
07:46
understood and situated within the
07:48
push-pull factors of identity
07:49
construction and finally good history is
07:54
always communicated through narrative
07:55
it’s about stories so engagement if
08:02
that’s what history is what is
08:03
engagement I think it’s too often at
08:05
least on my campus up until recently
08:07
it’s been too often conflated with
08:08
outreach and I think outreach is best
08:11
regarded instead as a component of what
08:14
engagement is engagement something much
08:16
broader we have to be really careful too
08:21
because outreach itself old school
08:23
outreach which is what extension
08:25
departments used to do on campuses back
08:27
in the 1910s through the 1970s it can
08:30
smack up arrogance it can be arrogant
08:32
it’s the the scholarly expert who’s
08:34
taken information out to the community
08:36
and telling them what they need to know
08:37
right and you don’t want to be that guy
08:40
right engagement engage history is doing
08:44
something where you’re pulling yourself
08:47
into the community however that’s
08:49
defined and we will talk about that in a
08:50
second in a way that the community is in
08:52
forming and shaping the product that’s
08:54
being produced the knowledge is being
08:55
generated and that means that there’s
08:57
there’s a scale on a one end you can
09:00
have no engagement at all and good
09:01
history can be done without engagement
09:03
and then there’s a full-on engagement
09:05
and bad history can be done with full
09:07
engagement if it’s not done properly so
09:08
I’m not saying one is good and what is
09:10
bad but it’s important to distinguish I
09:12
think there’s all kinds of opportunities
09:14
for teaching research and learning along
09:17
this spectrum where do you involve
09:19
students where do you start to go from
09:23
creating knowledge as a scholar to
09:25
co-creating knowledge with the community
09:27
these sorts of questions are what we
09:29
need to work out for every individual
09:30
product there isn’t it it’s not as
09:32
though every every project should be at
09:34
the far end it’s that you need to find
09:36
out where the right place is to answer
09:38
the questions that need to be answered
09:39
so all along that way you figure out
09:41
what sort of research can be done what
09:43
research can be done by graduate
09:45
students what research can be done by
09:46
community members what research can be
09:48
done by undergraduate students and then
09:52
ideally we work in we integrate teaching
09:54
opportunities into that process all
09:55
along what we emerge with then is a
09:59
definition of engaged scholarship that
10:01
starts out by saying if it’s fully
10:03
engaged is the community involved in the
10:05
planning are they involved in the
10:07
implementation and are they involved at
10:10
the final stage the assessment stage it
10:13
doesn’t mean they have to agree with
10:15
everything you do either and if you
10:17
build a good partnership people will
10:19
come to respect you even if they
10:20
disagree with you and that’s around that
10:22
deep sort of engagement that we’re sort
10:24
of striving for is the activity
10:28
addressing unidentified community need
10:31
it can be curiosity driven but if you
10:34
can shape that curiosity Durham project
10:36
so that it’s actually doing something
10:37
that has a policy outcome some kind of
10:38
pragmatic outcome it’s Richard is it
10:42
meaningful to the community in some way
10:44
how do you identify that have the
10:45
community university agreed upon
10:46
expected outcomes and benefits this is
10:48
where I did a big study at the
10:50
University of sketch when three years
10:51
ago and this is where the big sort of
10:53
break
10:54
down occurs right along the way the
10:56
academic is saying well I work on this
10:58
cycle where you know eight months in the
11:00
winter i teach four months in the summer
11:01
I try to do my research and the
11:03
community is saying well we approached
11:04
you in November and why didn’t you start
11:06
until May sort of thing like there’s out
11:08
of step and so what are the outcomes and
11:10
what’s the process is along the way is
11:13
there clear evidence of benefit to the
11:14
community and is there clear evidence of
11:17
benefit to the faculty and the
11:18
university those things aren’t mutually
11:22
incompatible those are things that
11:23
should inform one another and then you
11:26
need to bring in students I think anyway
11:29
link it to your own faculty research
11:32
programs don’t dive into something that
11:34
you don’t have an expertise and rather
11:36
bring a degree of expertise and then
11:38
humble yourself by going into a
11:39
community and trying to find a new way
11:41
to learn and relearn what you think you
11:43
already got to start on so if that’s the
11:46
case once we have those sort of things
11:47
in place we end up with something like
11:49
this I think where the activity the
11:51
community needs the benefits and the
11:52
involvement are all in forming one
11:54
another they’re all building together
11:55
towards the inside okay and finally my
12:00
third term the defining community so now
12:03
I Rana CLE this is the term that is the
12:06
least well defined it has the least
12:07
amount of consensus around it within the
12:09
community gage scholarship disciplinary
12:13
perspectives have a lot to do with this
12:15
and I think that’s fine the way a
12:17
sociologist defines community is
12:19
different than the way a historian
12:21
defines community than the way an
12:22
anthropologist defines community etc etc
12:24
but the problem is that all of our
12:27
disciplines we don’t necessarily respect
12:29
the way the other people define
12:30
community and that creates problems when
12:32
it comes to having your shirt grant
12:34
reviewed when you have your article peer
12:35
reviewed when you go into a community
12:37
that’s used to working with one of those
12:38
sister disciplines and they say well
12:40
that’s not how the anthropologist did
12:42
things last month or or they expect you
12:44
to behave like a sociologist or after
12:46
you’ve been in there they expect the
12:47
sociologist to behave like a historian
12:49
so we need we need to a better job of
12:51
respecting and honoring the different
12:52
disciplinary perspectives basic kind of
12:57
questions emerge I know this happens
12:59
when I talk to my Dean or my talk to the
13:00
vice president Provost about supporting
13:02
community engaged research is it
13:04
necessarily local
13:06
can you do community engaged research in
13:08
Africa from York University is it
13:12
necessarily small-scale do communities
13:16
have to have a geographic expression
13:17
just have to be a place where there’s a
13:19
community can they be created through
13:22
meaningful thematic groupings all
13:24
indigenous people in some way are they
13:26
linked sufficiently that someone going
13:28
to a project that wasn’t grounded in a
13:29
single indigenous community what about
13:33
the subaltern communities that we know
13:35
exists within every other community so
13:38
you get band council approval or you
13:39
work with a local municipality you get
13:41
them to endorse a project then you get
13:43
into the community and you find that in
13:44
fact there are sub communities that
13:46
oppose or a setup in opposition to the
13:48
project initially created and then
13:52
ultimately can I think a big question
13:53
that senior administrators on campuses
13:56
like to ask is well can there be
13:57
economically link communities and I
13:59
think in part this can be code words for
14:00
corporations perhaps I think but the
14:05
point I think here is to understand how
14:07
different disciplines come at these one
14:10
current stream of argument says that
14:12
communities are groups of people who
14:14
feel so powerfully connected that
14:17
they’re willing to fight and potentially
14:19
die to preserve the community know
14:20
that’s that’s sort of a if you think of
14:23
a perspective sorry a sliding scale
14:27
that’s probably at the one end but at
14:30
the other end you can get to a point
14:31
where people aren’t willing to fight or
14:33
die for something and I think in the end
14:34
that those people then aren’t community
14:37
their participants they’re individuals
14:39
who are participating perhaps in a
14:40
project but that’s that’s a different
14:42
thing so if you think about that who who
14:46
is willing to die and fight and identify
14:49
profoundly with the community in Canada
14:52
we have all sorts of ways that this can
14:54
be done indigenous groups activist
14:57
groups I mean gendered groups
15:01
environmental groups Union groups it’s
15:04
it’s everywhere the point i think is for
15:07
us to start putting those blocks
15:09
together in ways that reflect the way
15:11
communities themselves define themselves
15:13
it’s not up to us to go and define
15:15
whether or not this is a community as a
15:17
lot of your ethics boards might ask you
15:18
to do when you’re trying to set
15:19
project it’s rather about trying to have
15:22
the community define who they are so
15:23
that you can respond to that and again
15:27
this suggests the spectrum I think from
15:29
individual to community and it’s not as
15:31
though work on one end is less valuable
15:33
than work on another it’s just that it’s
15:34
a different type of work so can’t a
15:38
corporation be a community I’m not sure
15:40
a nation-state can it be a community I
15:43
think in certain circumstances an NGO
15:46
yes I suspect so but often they try to
15:49
represent communities and so they become
15:50
a filter between you and the community
15:52
that you’re trying to connect with an
15:54
extended family certainly a faith group
15:59
perhaps a village I mean I’m just trying
16:04
to throw some examples of what it might
16:05
be and what it might not be but I think
16:08
a community is something that you know
16:09
when you find it right you know it when
16:12
you see it but you can’t always define
16:14
it in the abstract in the absence of the
16:15
human relationships that give it give it
16:17
coherence so the question becomes how
16:21
are you engaged often that’s the
16:23
question that administrators will often
16:25
ask on campuses and I like to think that
16:27
the question can only be answered by
16:29
another question really so you know one
16:31
of those tricky kind of answers that
16:33
frustrate people but the answer is
16:35
really how engaged is the community in
16:38
the project that you’re talking about if
16:40
it’s community engagement you can be as
16:41
engaged as you want but if they’re not
16:42
engaged back it’s not engagement so
16:45
really the power isn’t in your hands all
16:47
you can do is enable and facilitate
16:49
community engagement and this could look
16:54
different depending on the type of
16:55
project you’re doing whether it leans
16:57
hard to the social sciences more to the
16:59
side of the humanities if it’s boring on
17:01
interdisciplinary perspectives from
17:02
sociology or anthropology compared to
17:04
literary criticism or whatever it might
17:06
be and now here’s the part that I think
17:10
is sort of debated and then I’m going to
17:11
get to my concluding comments how am i
17:12
doing for time 16 I’m still good good
17:16
excellent there’s a growing body of
17:19
scholarship out there that says that the
17:21
community engagement of any kind is
17:23
inherently colonial in nature because
17:27
it’s a process it’s predicated on the
17:29
process of other people I will work with
17:32
that
17:33
community they are other din some way
17:35
they are other as a gendered group other
17:37
Dazz an ethnic group other des an
17:39
indigenous group other does a class
17:40
group in some way and that inherently by
17:43
by having that other ring process you
17:45
are reinforcing old imperialist ways of
17:47
thinking and imperialist histories I
17:49
think that’s true but I don’t think that
17:53
should stop us in other disciplines the
17:59
answer to that problem has largely comes
18:00
the idea of what we need is humility
18:02
which i think is a powerful tool that we
18:04
should embrace the idea of not knowing
18:07
going into a community and not knowing
18:09
learning to unlearn what you currently
18:11
no indigenous abhay our kin with that
18:17
original history is to and digitize your
18:18
mind decolonize your mind go into a
18:20
community and unlearn what you thought
18:22
were the priorities and what you thought
18:24
were the hierarchies but as historians I
18:29
think while we can learn from these
18:30
sister does disciplines and I think we
18:32
need to we should we need to embrace
18:33
that I think we also have certain tools
18:36
that are quite radical within our own
18:38
disciplinary tradition that we need we
18:40
shouldn’t forget about that we should
18:42
bring to the fore and I think oftentimes
18:44
they don’t get brought to the fore
18:45
because they are so difficult a lot of
18:49
anthropologists are which I work with in
18:52
partnerships often are quick to point
18:54
out that historians don’t have methods
18:55
right you guys have approaches that’s
18:57
what they’ll say to me right and I think
18:59
that’s actually a good thing having
19:00
approaches rather than strict methods
19:02
but on the other hand there are
19:04
principles if we do history collect
19:07
correctly I think we can escape the
19:08
confines of our learned identities the
19:11
identities that we have grown up with
19:12
that we think are ascribed but that
19:13
we’ve learned our gender identity our
19:14
class identity our ethnic identity right
19:17
we can escape those and we can find
19:19
freedom and here I’m drawing on the the
19:21
seminal philosophical historical works
19:23
of RG Collingwood from the 1940s where
19:25
he says that through the process of
19:27
asking the right questions and thinking
19:31
historically as we generate our answers
19:33
we can actually escape we can get the
19:36
greatest gift that any discipline can
19:38
offer we can escape ourselves and be
19:40
free free of ourselves
19:46
now inherently that sounds like it could
19:50
be very very dangerous because it’s all
19:52
about cultural appropriation if it’s
19:54
done wrong I’m escaping myself I’m
19:56
thinking like a 19th century Inuit woman
19:58
dangerous right for a white guy who from
20:01
the south whose etc etc etc intellectual
20:06
imperialism can be the result right and
20:08
we and we don’t we know how bad that is
20:09
we know how hurtful that can be and so
20:11
I’m not in any way advocating that and
20:13
that’s not what Collingwood was
20:14
advocating at all but we can mitigate
20:18
that risk I think good historians if we
20:21
recognize that all of our
20:22
interpretations all of our efforts at
20:24
historical thinking are inherently
20:26
incomplete they’re always a work in
20:28
process they can always be refined and
20:30
made better in the future in the same
20:32
way that the metaphors we use to
20:34
describe things can always be refined
20:36
always be redone relooked at if we can
20:45
escape our perspective and know that in
20:47
that escaping we’ve never fully escaped
20:50
it and that’s the internal sort of
20:51
contradiction that is where all the
20:53
exciting things happen we’re trying to
20:55
escape but we’re trying to think like
20:56
somebody else we’re trying to put
20:58
ourselves in their position but knowing
20:59
that we can never achieve it that in
21:02
itself I think is the powerful point
21:04
where communities will open up and begin
21:06
to trust at least that’s been my ex my
21:09
experience and that means that history
21:14
can offer a freedom by being active by
21:19
breaking the bounds of our own thinking
21:20
through the tools that our discipline
21:22
and sister discipline sibling
21:23
disciplines can provide to us thank you
21:26
very much
21:33
you
21:43
you
—
Previously published on Activehistory.ca and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
—
◊♦◊
Talk to you soon.
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want to join our calls on a regular basis, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: Screenshot from video.