“Stories As Theories”: Illuminating Human Rights Education Through The Narratives Of Human Rights Educators

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the narratives of human rights education (HRE) activist educators to contribute to the formation of an important yet less recognized history of the evolution of human rights that foregrounds education and activism. As a human rights activist educator who has worked in the field for decades, my concern is that the United Nations (UN) legal-political, nation-state orientation to human rights and HRE has resulted in a myopic view of human rights history, centered on the evolution of UN human rights law and political monitoring systems as the primary ways of measuring the impact of human rights across the globe. The disclosed experiences and actions of activist educators—their stories—which I see as theories (Brayboy, 2005; Million, 2011) reveal the complexity of land, Indigenous, transformative storywork (Archibald, 2008) within holistic Human Rights Learning (HRL). This study examines the transformative and creative nature of HRL through the personal lived experiences of four HRE activists in the Philippines and the United States, Lisa Bellanger, Cheryl Daytec-Yañgot, Loretta Ross, and Feliece Yeban, who often at great risk have engaged in the field for 25 years or more. These activist educators, working as Co-Creators in this study, have used HRE as a vehicle to address injustices by learning for and through human rights while persisting in the field. I have used the term Co-Creators to indicate deep collaboration in fellowship with human rights educators and as one myself who works alongside them as a colleague and researcher. Through their stories, this dissertation shows concrete contributions of HRE and HRL by explicitly addressing the impacts of the tensions of sovereignty, nation-state identities, treaty rights, colonization, justice movements, climate change, and global pandemics. By understanding how HRE has been shaped in the past, how it is practiced in the present, and how it is envisioned in future initiatives, HRE fields can be better positioned to further research, construct formal and non-formal education programs, and uplift narratives to positively impact the promotion, protection, and fulfillment of hope, joy, and love for all our relations.