Abstract:

Colonial ideas of history in South African school history education continue to persist despite the official end of apartheid. The production of history ideas informing the current history education has been exclusively tied to the Eurocentric knowledge canon. The history education remains influenced and shaped by Eurocentric sociocultural artifacts thus silencing the Indigenous ideas of history. This article argues for the decolonisation of history education by foregrounding Indigenous ideas of history. To do that, we used the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) as a way of generating new ideas of history that were mediated by the cultural and social artifacts of the Indigenous people. The Change Laboratory (CL) intervention research methodology generated the data. Considering that knowledge in Indigenous communities is collectively generated, the Change Laboratory as a research-based workshop, through its expansive learning process, allowed us to collectively model alternative Indigenous ideas of history that can also inform history education. In the process of knowledge production, within the cycle of expansive learning, we and the Indigenous people charted new ideas of history embedded in their indigeneity.

Keywords:

Decolonisation, Indigenous, Change Laboratory, History.