Can National Museums be Postcolonial?: The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Obligation of Redress to First Nations

Abstract

This chapter explores the potential role of a national museum in redressing the human rights abuses suffered by internally colonized Indigenous peoples that is offered by the advent of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2014. It argues that the mandates and programs of the national museums must be considered relationally, as an institutional set that is designed to ensure the social reproduction of its sponsoring society. The dispositions of space and topics described in the CMHR's planning documents are analyzed in relation to the rapid shrinkage of Indigenous programming in the other national museums during the first decade of the twenty‐first century following the election of three conservative federal governments. The CMHR's commitment to “change the future” suggests its potential to meet Canada's obligation to redress the suppression of traditional culture and other human rights abuses suffered by its Indigenous peoples. Although this obligation was incurred by its official apology for the residential school system and signing of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, projects initiated by other federal museums and institutions have been radically curtailed by radical budget cuts and restructurings.