The Affective Work of Stolen Generations Testimony: From the Archives to the Classroom

Stolen Generations testimonies offer insights into the history, effects, and legacies of colonization in Australia—a history that is currently being contested in the public domain. In this essay, I analyze the ways in which these testimonies address audiences, and the ways in which listeners respond, taking my classroom as a particular site of reception. Based on an analysis of some of my students' responses, I suggest that Stolen Generations testimonies sometimes provoke non-Indigenous teachers and students to become aware of our own subject-positions as the inheritors of a post/colonial legacy, a consciousness that can potentially contribute to the reconciliation process in Australia.