Learn more about the role of DOHR as a first of its kind curriculum in Canada to use personal storytelling and immersive technology to address an historical harm.
DOHR is a first of its kind curriculum in Canada to use personal storytelling and immersive technology to address an historical harm. The curriculum unit designed for Canadian History courses at the Grade 10 to 12 level. The curriculum introduces students to the history of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC or the Home).
Opened in 1921, the NSHCC was a welfare institution for African Nova Scotian children. Throughout the over 70-year history of the Home, residents suffered the effects of institutionalized racism, including neglect and abuse. As a result of the former residents’ activism through their organization called the Victims of Institutional Child Exploitation Society (VOICES), the Nova Scotia provincial government launched a Restorative Public Inquiry into the Home, the first public inquiry of its kind in Canada. DOHR has partnered in the educational mandate of the Inquiry, including with the former residents, to educate the public about the experiences of former residents in support of reconciliation.
Among the questions the curriculum encourages students to consider is: Why is the Home significant in Canadian History? What matters about what happened in the Home? Why did the Home become a place of harm? What is required to address the legacy of this harm? This curriculum aims to promote relationality, that is, to equip students with tools to help them understand their relationship to historical harms of racism, to the lived experiences of African Nova Scotians, and to the future of their communities.
The curriculum provides lessons that deepen students’ understanding of the history of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. The curriculum centres the first voice and experiences of former residents within the larger historical context of African Nova Scotian history and addresses complex and interconnected factors that contributed to the history of systemic racism through the Home. The curriculum enables students to join the former residents in their Journey to Light, guided by Sankofa, to bring light to what happened in the past in order to find a way to a better future.
The curriculum includes 5 core lessons and additional extension activities.
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