TOURISM RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Can Settler Memories Work Against Settler Colonialism?
An Application of Collective Memory Work
by Bryan S.R. Grimwood, Corey W. Johnson, & Kendra Fortin
Maori scholar, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) famously refers to research as “one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary”. Smith made this statement because non-Indigenous, European/American researchers have historically used Indigenous knowledge, artifacts, narratives, and other “data” without consulting or asking permission from the appropriate communities. And while this research has often led to career advancement for academic researchers there is just as often little benefit for Indigenous communities.
Western research is tied to colonial power
Echoing Smith’s critique, Indigenous scholars, communities, activists, and allies argue that Western research is tied to colonial power.
Western research is assumed to be objective and neutral. However, academic research has a habit of concealing the ways it excludes, exploits, and harms Indigenous bodies. Our research seeks to break this habit.
Collective memory work
Collective memory work is a participatory and action-oriented research methodology. It involves significant participant involvement and encourages individual and collective change.
In our paper, recently published in Tourism Geographies, we present two main arguments:
- Collective memory work is a research methodology that can challenge settler colonial structures, systems, and ideologies
- Collective memory work can help Settlers understand how their identities and responsibilities are connected to colonization
Drawing on insights from a pilot study, we show how collective memory work can disrupt cultural narratives, knowledge systems, and social structures associated with settler colonialism.
Conducting a collective memory work process
Because it is a collaborative process, participants who engage in collective memory work are called co-researchers. Co-researchers participate in a series of distinct phases.
The first phase begins with academic researchers presenting one or more prompts to co-researchers. Prompt(s) are determined in relation to the research project objectives. Based on these prompts, co-researchers write a story that recounts a personal experience. We refer to these personal stories as memory narratives.
The second phase of the collective memory process involves co-researchers participating in focus group discussions. In these discussions, co-researchers critically and collaboratively analyze the memory narratives. This phase is usually facilitated by an academic researcher.
Why collective memory work?
Collective memory work is unique from traditional forms of research. It is collaborative in nature and has a social justice orientation. Co-researchers in our study included tourism and leisure studies students and instructors from the University of Waterloo in Canada.
The process invited us to confront questions like:
- How can researchers and students who share similar characteristics to those in power also work to disrupt that power?
- What options do we have in research to unlearn and transform our colonizing identities?
- How do we expose, confront, and take responsibility for the different ways settler colonialism shapes our identities and personal memories?
Engaging in a collective memory work process is beneficial for co-researchers. Participation helps co-researchers share and reflect on their tourism experiences. Co-researchers also learn to question and understand their experiences in relation to broader social contexts. These insights can help co-researchers identify ways of effecting individual and collective change.
Collective memory work in tourism research
Tourism scholars have used collective memory work to explore connections between gender, power, and travel experiences (see e.g., Small, 1999, 2005; Mooney, 2017, Rouzrokh et al., 2017). Our approach advances the possible uses of this research methodology. We use collective memory work as a research and teaching method with the aim of disrupting settler colonialism.
Our application of collective memory work recognizes the term Settler as a marker of identity and thus responsibility. This recognition helps create space for Indigenous knowledges in tourism research. Particularly, we aim to support tourism research carried out by Indigenous peoples themselves.
Challenges of collective memory work
Like any type of research, collective memory work comes with challenges. Some of these challenges include:
- Establishing and maintaining trust among co-researchers
Discomforting discussions about colonial violence may occur during the collective memory work process. Some co-researchers may have directly felt or experienced the impacts of colonial violence. For these reasons, academic researchers must work to establish and maintain trusting relationships among co-researchers.
- Balancing and navigating power relations
Scholars practising collective memory work must be attentive to power dynamics among co-researchers. Power can manifest in many ways, from historical to intra-group dynamics. Therefore, academic researchers must be knowledgeable about specific colonial geographies they are working in.
- Facilitating critical and constructive conversations
Researchers must be reflexive facilitators. Prompts must trigger memories that are relevant to the research project. Additionally, prompts must encourage co-researchers to engage in critical and constructive dialogue.
- Remaining aware of privilege
Researchers must remain alert to how, when, and for what purpose they themselves enact their privilege as beneficiaries of Settler colonialism.
Looking ahead
Moving forward, we are carrying with us several lessons learned in the pilot study. More recent research includes implementing collective memory work with students participating in an ecotourism course. Future research includes collective memory work with tourism students and researchers involved in a series of land camps. This project is intended to be designed in collaboration with the Indigenous Student Centre at our university. Co-researchers will include both Indigenous and Settler students curious about tourism and relations to land.
Implementing collective memory work with tourists and tourism operators poses some challenges. The aims of collective memory work may misalign with holiday or business desires. However, this type of research is promising, especially among consumers and providers of reconciliation tourism, ethical tourism, or culturally sensitive tourism.
Some might interpret what drives our use of collective memory work is a sense of Settler guilt or shame. For us though, engaging with Settlers in collective memory work is more about gaining a better understanding of our privilege and taking responsibility for our complicity in settler colonialization. By collaborating with each other, our students, and our neighbours, collective memory work offers one form of social justice inquiry that can help us illuminate, contextualize, and come to grips with the ways identity is entangled with the tourism stories we share.
About the Authors
Bryan S.R. Grimwood is Settler Canadian of British descent and Associate Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research and teaching examine human-nature relationships and advocates social justice and sustainability in contexts of tourism, leisure, and livelihoods.
Corey W. Johnson is the Karla A. Henderson Distinguished Professor of Social Justice at North Carolina State University. He teaches courses on inclusive recreation, social justice, gender and sexuality, qualitative research methods, and the philosophy of science. Dr Johnson’s theorizing and qualitative inquiry focuses its attention on the power relations between dominant (white, male, heterosexual, etc.) and non-dominant populations in the cultural contexts of leisure.
Kendra Fortin holds a master’s degree in Recreation and Leisure Studies from the University of Waterloo. Kendra’s research draws on settler colonial theory and post-colonial theology, which is inspired by her upbringing in Saugeen Shores, Ontario, and her spiritual connection with land. Kendra is carving new pathways in tourism studies, demonstrating why religious and spiritually oriented questioning is relevant to decolonial projects within and beyond the tourism realm.
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