Description

The Walter H. Capps Center at UC Santa Barbara will convene exploratory workshops intended to examine how historically marginalized communities draw upon religious resources in the work of repair. Considering advocacy for classic forms of reparation, such as financial redress and land returns, the project will also examine other modes of pursuing repair, such as memorialization, community history projects, and allied efforts to raise local awareness and deepen historical understanding. The project’s work will begin with a consideration of repatriation processes that have resulted in the return of thousands of Native American ancestors and sacred objects to their home communities, subsequently building upon this work to explore other forms of repair. Seeking to bridge academic, activist, and community interests by involving a diverse range of workshop participants, the project aims to learn more about contemporary reparation efforts that engage religion in order to: support such efforts in targeted and specific ways; distill best practices; deepen analysis of the role of religion in such contexts; and share learnings with a range of audiences, including community members, policy specialists, and scholars.