This event is part of Genocide Awareness Month Programming for WI Educators.
Abstract:
Between 1904 and 1908, German colonial forces perpetrated genocide against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples in German Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia), a history whose legacies remain deeply contested in education, public memory, and contemporary struggles for justice in Namibia and Germany. Drawing on our ongoing international and collaborative research project that seeks to center contemporary Ovaherero and Nama experiences, we examine how fourth- and fifth-generation survivor-descendant oral histories and Indigenous knowledge can challenge curricular silences, colonial archives, and dominant national narratives. Centering descendant communities’ voices, we consider how secondary genocide education in Namibia might be (re)imagined to support cultural survival, intergenerational memory, and reparatory justice, especially including demands for the return of ancestral lands. Additionally, comparing educational and memorial practices in Namibia, Germany, and the United States, we explore the possibilities and limitations of teaching about genocide in societies shaped by colonial violence. We will share our open-access archive of Ovaherero and Nama oral histories and example secondary curricula. This research is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Human Rights Initiative Research Fund at the University of Minnesota.
George Dalbo is an Assistant Professor of Education and Youth Studies at Beloit College and a Research Fellow at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. His teaching and research critically examine comparative genocide and human rights education in middle and secondary classrooms and curricula in the United States and Canada, with particular attention to Indigenous genocide, curricular silences, and the tensions between justice-oriented pedagogy and settler colonial schooling structures.
Joe Eggers is the Acting Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on Holocaust and genocide studies broadly, especially the legacies of settler colonialism, and how histories of colonial violence are remembered in Minnesota and elsewhere.