Untold and Silenced Stories of Uganda: Uncovering Wounds of Colonialism

Collective Memory Constellation
Untold and Silenced Stories of Uganda: Uncovering Wounds of Colonialism
Mon 1st November, 5.30-8.30pm UK (12.30pm-3.30pm Central)
£45

From 1894 to 1962 Uganda was under British colonial rule. The period following independence in 1962 has seen many violent conflicts including dictatorship under the regime of Idi Amin.

Uganda has the youngest population in the world and they are living in the midst of continuing political conflict.

The intention of this collective memory class is to explore the untold and silenced stories of the ancestors, the legacy of empire and the cost of belonging on the land for the descendants in the present.

The wounds of colonialism are often silenced and denied place by the single story that is told from the perspective of colonisation. It is a deep, tender, uncomfortable and painful wound with stories of loss of land, voice, autonomy, beliefs and a denial of the place for grief held within the forbidden wounding.

My hope with this class is to create a space to sit with the voiceless in these stories that haven’t been told, and to begin to break some of the silence.

When we collectively witness stories that have been silenced in this way we move beyond the ‘single story’ version that displaces and dehumanises. We honour the souls within the untold stories and welcome those souls back home to belonging. Their voices belong too. We also discover the parts of ourselves that are resonant with the voiceless, whether that is through similar voicelessness in our ancestral stories or through the need to deny the involvement of our ancestors in such stories. Shame and voicelessness within our ancestral stories are not benign, we – the descendants in the present – are still living the cost of the silence. Sitting with and witnessing the stories allows us to come home too.