Osgoode’s Trip to Winnipeg
From October 24 to 26, a twenty-two person Osgoode group went to Winnipeg to visit the newly opened Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Our group consisted of the twelve students in the Anti-Discrimination Intensive Program, ADIP directors Michelle Mulgrave and Bruce Ryder, visiting professor Jeffery Hewitt, artist-in-residence Julie Lassonde, and six other passionate Osgoode students selected through an application process.
We supplemented our engagement with the “official” version of human rights presented at the museum by learning about the lived experiences of Aboriginal people in Winnipeg. To that end, we spent a day at Winnipeg’s Indian and Métis Friendship Centre. Julie Lassonde’s two performances during the trip helped us engage with the emotional and creative aspects of law and human rights struggles. Finally, we explored the academic side of human rights issues by visiting the Centre for Human Rights Research and the Canadian Journal of Human Rights, both housed at the University of Manitoba.
Since the outset, controversy has brewed around the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Some people were angry about the museum’s alleged failure to properly address Canada’s treatment of Aboriginal peoples – in particular, their refusal to label that treatment as genocide. Concerns about political interference with curatorial independence surfaced. While the museum officially opened in September, it turned out that only a fraction of the exhibits were open to the public at the time of our visit.
Despite these reports, I believed that the museum would be, by and large, a good thing – perhaps not the greatest step forward, perhaps just a baby one, but nevertheless, something positive. Like many others, I hoped the museum would contribute to public awareness and advance important dialogues about ongoing human rights challenges. In particular, I hoped to see honest acknowledgment of Canada’s former and current shameful treatment of Aboriginal peoples.
Having seen the museum, I am very sorry to say that I did not see the honest acknowledgment I was looking for. Surely, the museum is beautiful. The building is monumental, powerful, and stunning. Galleries formed by smooth, curved, and angular stone are connected by upward sloping walkways; the space is increasingly filled with natural light as one ascends. But to me, its smooth surfaces gloss over things that should be exposed – ugly things. It puts Canadians in a celebratory mood, a mood not yet deserved, an inappropriate mood, in my opinion.
That said, we weren’t able to see many important exhibits in the museum, including one detailing Canada’s “steps and missteps” on the road to human rights (as the museum’s website puts it), and an exhibit examining mass atrocities around the world. Perhaps what I wanted to see is in those exhibits. Thus, my perception is based on incomplete information, and it may change when I see those exhibits. And, as Professor Karen Busby reminded us, the museum’s opening does not mark the end of its development but merely its beginning. Like human rights themselves, the museum must perpetually progress. A forthcoming collection of essays we were able to read, The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, makes important contributions to ongoing critical conversations.
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights
In the main hall, visitors begin by hearing their tour guide acknowledge that we are on Treaty 1 territory. A good start. We learn that the museum is built directly on a traditional meeting place for First Nations people, who have been meeting at the intersection of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers for at least eight thousand years. Eight thousand. Now, we meet here.
I wonder about the mutual understandings that underlie Treaty 1. What was promised in exchange for the government’s facilitation of settlement on this land? Was this type of land use contemplated? Did our government honour the agreement? Are we honouring the terms today?
These questions hang poignantly in the air, but are not addressed by the museum or the guide. Instead, we rush quickly to the next exhibit, which asks us, “What are human rights?” Significant individuals and atrocities in human rights history are described and depicted on panels along one long wall, in a dark, large, lengthy exhibit space.
Midway through this long hall is a beautifully carved box with sad faces on it. It is displayed low down. I have to stoop to read the label’s small print, which identifies the object as being the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Bentwood Box, and lists the artist’s name, Coast Salish artist Luke Marston. I know this box was used to gather terrible stories of Canada’s violations of First Nations human rights. Why is this box so low down, I wonder? Where is the context? Where are the stories? Perhaps they are in one of the currently unopened exhibits. I worry that visitors who don’t know much about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission might stroll by, thinking no more than how pretty that piece of First Nations art is.
Thanks to curator Armando Perla, who graciously hosted our visit to the museum, we were also the first members of the public to visit an exhibit called “Protecting Rights in Canada.” The purpose of the exhibit is to showcase the constitutional foundations on which Canada rests. Several key documents are displayed, including the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Proclamation of the Canada Act, 1982. But where is the Treaty of Niagara of 1764? The Royal Proclamation can’t be understood without understanding this treaty, which illustrates the First Nations’ understanding of the Proclamation. We know their understanding of the Proclamation was different from that held by the British. But no object or text describes the Treaty here.
In the same room, an interactive display asks visitors whether treaty rights should still be recognized today. I’m taken aback. Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 explicitly says we must. Why are we asked this question?
We move forward through the galleries, ascending in an upward spiral towards the glass tower at the very top. “From darkness to light,” the tour guide points out, noting that this transition is deliberate and meant to represent the journey towards greater recognition and protection of human rights. While structurally beautiful, the association of darkness with “bad/backwards,” and lightness with “good/forward” is a troubling one, especially for a human rights museum.
The second last exhibit showcases Canada’s military for “Protecting Human Rights Abroad.” We are as a group mostly shocked by the placement of this exhibit (albeit, a temporary one) so near the “pinnacle” of human rights achievement.
The tour ends up in the building’s glass pinnacle, the “Israel Asper Tower of Hope.” From high in the tower, we gaze down at the Winnipeg streets, sprawling outwards. From this height you can’t see it, but if you walk the streets on the ground, the class divide between white people and First Nations peoples in Winnipeg is stark.
This beautiful, enormous, powerful stone building. Who is it for?