We need the Canadian Museum on Residential Schools now

OTTAWA—July 1 is the 75th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. The Auschwitz camp was started in 1940 near Oswiecim in Poland and held up to 20,000 prisoners. The Birkenau camp was added on in 1941 to increase capacity with up to 90,000 prisoners. Numerous sub-camps were created in the years following. Jews, Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs, Jehovah’s Witnesses and gays were imprisoned. Approximately 232,000 children and youth were removed to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Criminal medical experiments occurred in attempts to prove the white supremacist cult-like beliefs, sometimes in collusion with pharmaceutical companies. Experiments in mass sterilization methods occurred. In mid-January 1947, the SS attempted to cover their tracks at Auschwitz and Birkenau by burning camp records and blowing up gas chambers, crematoriums, and warehouses full of stolen property. On Jan. 27, the Red Army liberated about 7,000 people. Auschwitz: even the word sucks the warmth out of the air. The Auschwitz memorial was created in 1947 just a couple years after the end of World War II by the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art through an act of Parliament, and built with full involvement of former prisoners and the Central Committee of Jews in Poland. Beyond the physical memorial, the museum also has travelling exhibits, hosts international conferences, leads research and publications, and has an associated foundation. In 2021, its operating budget was about EU$23-million, about $30-million Canadian. About one-quarter is revenue from visitation, another one-quarter is from Polish and EU funding. In 2019, more than two million people visited the memorial. Museums done well are essential to the preservation of shared memory and an essential backstop against denialism of history. Museums done poorly are tone-deaf amplifications of a romanticized history. It’s not easy to tell a balanced history, which is why Canada needs a museum to preserve the memories and lessons of residential schools and the loss of thousands of Indigenous children. The federal government was finally forced to make an announcement for a memorial in April 2022, in response to the findings of unmarked graves at residential schools. A national committee has finally been named. It would be good form for the committee and the federal government to think big in their planning of a residential schools museum and memorial. An effective museum is costly, but forgetting what Canada has done to Indigenous children would be morally bankrupt. Be prepared to fund it well because a half-ass budget would be quite telling about the department of Finance and Treasury Board’s combined commitment to reconciliation. For context, the Canadian Museum of History estimates its buildings and collections are worth $200-million, and it received federal funding of just over $80-million in 2020-21. Be prepared to build it big. If the federal government tries to underfund this memorial, it would be blatantly undercutting its moral obligations to reconciliation, but would be following the road of decades of policy that underfunds Indigenous anything. If it is located in Ottawa, which would be impactful for decision-makers here who wouldn’t be able to ignore it, then the City of Ottawa best be prepared to give appropriate space for the museum: highly visible, central, and a place of honour. The National Capital Commission will be expected to fully support it or incur some serious wrath. And people of Ottawa; please actively support the development of a memorial like you believe in reconciliation. In 2020, the 75th anniversary of the liberation, Auschwitz museum director Dr. Piotr Cywiński said: “Worse than forgetting, is such a memory, that doesn’t arouse a moral anxiety within us.” A museum and memorial on residential schools would ensure that Canada never forgets what it did to Indigenous children from coast to coast to coast. Rose LeMay is Tlingit from the West Coast and the CEO of the Indigenous Reconciliation Group. She writes twice a month about Indigenous inclusion and reconciliation. In Tlingit worldview, the stories are the knowledge system, sometimes told through myth and sometimes contradicting the myths told by others. But always with at least some truth. The Hill Times

We need the Canadian Museum on Residential Schools now

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We need the Canadian Museum on Residential Schools now

An effective museum is costly, but forgetting what Canada has done to Indigenous children would be morally bankrupt, writes Rose LeMay.

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