January Zoom Meeting

The next meeting of the London Chapter OAS will be online via ZOOM. It will be held on Thursday January 11, 2024, at 7:30 PM. The speaker will be:

Sierra McKinney Department of Anthropology, Université de Montréal, speaking on Addressing Colonial Guilt with Artefact-Centered Dialogue.

Summary: To better serve our communities and accurately portray the past, archaeologists are increasingly engaging with traumatic, upsetting, and at times, contested narratives of Canada’s colonial past. Due to their upsetting nature, these narratives frequently evoke feelings of grief, shame, guilt, anger, and defensiveness among both the public and practitioners. However, we often leave these emotions unaddressed to the detriment of our wellbeing and the wider aim of reconciliation. Research confirms that unaddressed guilt can manifest as disbelief, defensiveness, avoidance, and a refusal to accept new information. All of which significantly hinder meaningful reconciliation and educational aims. However, guilt is a social emotion and it has equally been shown to foster empathy, encourage interpersonal understanding, and promote reparation for past harms. These positive aspects are a potential tool for encouraging non-Indigenous visitors to engage with their role in reconciliation.

This presentation will examine a new model for visitor engagement at museums and heritage sites that was specifically designed to specifically designed to address negative affective responses to heritage. The belonging-centered dialogue (BCD) model of heritage interpretation uses facilitated dialogue and the museum collection to elicit the pro-social benefits of empathy while mitigating the negative consequences of guilt. Through an examination an evaluation of BCD model, this presentation will discuss the impact of negative emotions on ourselves and the public and provide guidance on how heritage professionals can address shame and guilt in relation to Canadian history.

London Chapter members will be automatically sent a ZOOM link but anyone else wishing to attend can send an email request to Jim Keron at jrkeron@yahoo.com and he will send a link to the ZOOM meeting session. The ZOOM session normally opens about 7:00 PM.

As a heads up, at our Thursday, February 8, 2024, 7:30 PM meeting will be held via ZOOM. The speaker will be: Dr. David Anderson, Professor Emeritus, University of Tennessee, speaking on some of his ground breaking research on the Archaic in the Southeastern USA.