A Pedagogy of Walking With Our Sisters

Abstract

This article examines the pedagogical and ethical implications of a white settler’s encounter with the Walking With Our Sisters commemorative art installation honouring missing and murdered Indigenous women. I argue that the installation offers a pedagogical intervention in official state memory and conventional approaches to teaching difficult knowledge. I offer an analysis of the centrality of embodiment, vulnerability, the visual, and affective force in the memorial in order make legible the pedagogy of affect and non-mastery at work in the exhibit and the ethical possibilities of such an approach to social justice education. I respond to the task of accountability and responsibility I felt summoned to address as a learner-participant in remembering the ongoing racial and gendered violence of white settler colonialism.

Keywords

• Ethics
• Affect
• Visuality
• Embodiment
• Vulnerability