Informal Interpretation Sites of Conscience 3

Informal Interpretation at Sites of Conscience 

            Part 3 of 4:  The Pitfalls of Belief System and Forgiveness 

People attracted to positions as interpreters at Sites of Conscience usually possess strong personal convictions about justice and injustice in addition to a passion for human rights.  Specifically, interpreters tend to have an emotional connection to the primary injustices associated with the designation of the site.  These personal beliefs can manifest as the third pitfall for interpreters.  The challenge for informal interpretation at Sites of Conscience is for the interpreter not to allow personal convictions and emotional needs to impair the visitors’ need to make their own emotional and intellectual connections with the site. 

Cultural norms and paradigms change over time.  Sites of Conscience can function as a spearhead for change.  Sites of Conscience elucidate injustices that were historically justified, institutionalized, and/or concealed. It is crucial to the mission of these sites to present the full range of impacts of these injustices on the groups affected by the injustices.  It is also crucial to the mission of Site of Conscience to illuminate the fallacies inherent in the enactment and rationalization of the injustice.  Bringing injustices to light and presenting the falsehoods of the reasoning that created the injustice are the tools that lead to changing cultural paradigms and can help heal people and nations.  Strong convictions about human rights can lead to demonizing the perpetrators of the injustice.  Interpreters at Sites of Conscience must find the balance between providing critique for the motivations and rationalizations of injustices without criticizing and marginalizing the perpetrators of the injustice.  Sites of Consciousness do not exist to punish people who perpetrated the injustice.  Interpreters at these sites must strive to avoid the pitfall of judging the past and of criticizing those people today who still find it difficult to accept that their culture is changing and who may be personally experiencing the paroxysms associated with shifting paradigms.   

Forgiveness presents the final pitfall for interpreters at Sites of Conscience.  Although forgiveness may play a prominent role in the process of healing, it is not a requisite requirement for the process.  The capacity of a visitor to a Site of Conscience to forgive the systems, institutions, and persons that perpetrated an injustice is predicated the unique, emotional and psychological composition of the individual.  In many cases, forgiveness may be antithetical to justice and to holding persons, systems, and institutions accountable for their actions and policies.  As Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said in 2010, “Forgiveness cannot happen in a vacuum.  There cannot be real forgiveness without justice.”  Indeed, many of the Sites of Conscience would not exist today if victims of the injustice simply forgave the policies, persons, and institutions that perpetrated the injustice.  It was the demand for justice from these victims that led to an acknowledgement of the injustice and started the processes to bring social awareness to these injustices.  For an interpreter at a Site of Consciousness, it is important to remember that forgiveness is an individual and personal choice.

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA