History, education, and transitional justice in Bougainville and Solomon Islands

Post-conflict Solomon Islands adopted a truth and reconciliation commission while its nearest neighbour, Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea, did not. My findings from ten months ethnographic research at secondary schools in both places shed light on the wisdom of Bougainvilleans’ reluctance to embark on a truth commission process. The idea that a post-conflict society must tell the truth of what happened and that everyone has the right to know that information was a poor match for Solomon Islands and Bougainville. Instead, the contribution of schools to transitional justice and historical understanding rested on the extent to which schools enabled young people to learn about the past in the context of place-based justice, locally defined. Solomon Islander and Bougainvillean youth, and their teachers, thus challenge transitional justice scholars and practitioners to understand the social life of history in the new contexts to which the field has travelled.