Nakba exhibit at Canadian Museum for Human Rights to draw on Palestinian oral histories

2025/11/21 2 Comments

I don’t envy the curators preparing the exhibition and having to navigate the politics (see reaction from some Jewish organizations below). That being said, it is a legitimate exhibition for the museum and the oral story approach is likely the most appropriate:

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is launching a new exhibit examining the Nakba, a period beginning in 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were displaced in the war over Israel’s creation.

Drawing on the oral histories of the Palestinian diaspora in Canada, the mixed-media display will open in June. It is set to remain a permanent part of the Winnipeg-based museum’s standing galleries for at least two years, chief executive officer Isha Khan told The Globe and Mail.

After years of protests and demonstrations outside the national museum demanding such an exhibit, advocates from several Jewish and Palestinian groups expressed elation about what they believe is a long overdue step toward public education. But at least two Canadian Jewish groups condemned the planned exhibit, stating that it undermines the legitimacy of Israeli statehood. One of them has withdrawn from future collaborations….

Source: Nakba exhibit at Canadian Museum for Human Rights to draw on Palestinian oral histories

Reaction from some Jewish organizations:

…The JHCWC also expressed concern the exhibit could overlook non-Jewish minorities who are Israeli citizen, including Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, Circassians and Samaritans – people who hold positions in the judiciary, parliament, health care and the military, and that their equal rights under Israeli law complicate common interpretations of the Nakba.

The centre notes previous exhibitions — including the Holocaust gallery — were organized with extensive consultation.

“I think what you’re seeing with the Jewish Heritage Centre is the manifestation of a fundamental breach of trust by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights,” says David Asper. “The factual, historical context of events surrounding the ‘Nakba’ are not just one story. In my father’s founding vision of the purpose of the Museum he never had a problem with the telling of the whole story, which includes the displacement and expulsion of over 800,000 Jews who were living in Arab countries and, perhaps most importantly, that a lot of what happened was triggered by the fact that many Arab countries declared war and tried to conquer and eliminate Israel in 1948.”…

Source: Canadian Museum for Human Rights has become ‘tool’ of one side of the Arab-Israeli story: David Asper

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New survey finds Canadians are feeling anxious about immigration

2024/11/20 Leave a comment

Would be nice if CBC would indicate in the article who carried out the survey but the findings make intuitive sense and largely track other surveys on the general questions (checked, online survey by Probe Research, no margin of error cannot be assigned):

Canadians are feeling increasingly uneasy about immigration and its role in generating “economic strain,” according to a new survey conducted by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Among other things, the survey found that many Canadians believe too much attention is being focused on newcomers and refugees, and that asylum seekers receive too many benefits.

The survey landed two weeks after Ottawa announced dramatic changes to its projected immigration numbers. On Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also said in an online video that he should have acted more quickly to address problems with the immigration system.

The survey heard from 2,500 Canadians in both 2023 and 2024. This year, it found that a majority — 56 per cent — said they believe refugees and asylum seekers “receive too many benefits.” The report calls that a “significant increase” over the 49 per cent who said the same thing in 2023.

The survey also reported a “significant decrease” in the number of Canadians who believe immigration makes the country better — from 52 per cent in 2023 down to 44 per cent this year.

The 2024 survey also found that 41 per cent of Canadians believe there’s “too much attention focused on the rights of newcomers.”

“Among responses received in open-ended inquiries, there was a notable increase between 2023 and 2024 in sentiments that correlate immigration with economic strain in Canada,” the report said.

The CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Isha Khan, told CBC News that “perceptions” about immigration are changing and the matter needs more study.

“That’s a point we really need to dig into,” Khan said. “We need to understand where those perceptions are coming from and how they impact our collective work.”

Immigration was only one aspect of the survey, entitled 2024 Foresights for Human Rights.

While just 11 per cent of respondents cited access to affordable housing as a top human rights issue, nearly 60 per cent said that right to housing had weakened over the last decade.

The report said that two in three respondents reported feeling optimistic about protecting human rights in Canada, particularly Indigenous rights and gender equity. Just one in three felt the same about human rights abroad….

Source: New survey finds Canadians are feeling anxious about immigration

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Jon Kay: Canadian Human Rights Commission must establish a special human-rights tribunal to address human-rights complaints pertaining to the presentation of human-rights issues at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights

2014/09/23 Leave a comment

Funny and ironic piece by Jonathan Kay who captures some of the absurdity of  identity politics and the criticism regarding the Canadian Museum for Human Rights:

The response of Canadian identity groups to the museum overall is perhaps best epitomized by a statement put out by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress last year, complaining that the museum’s treatment of Stalin’s forced starvation of millions of Ukrainians was fatally undercut by the fact that a panel on the subject was located too close to the public toilets. (Whose exhibit should be closest to the toilets? The Rwandans? The Cambodians? The Armenians? The Ukrainian Canadian Congress hasn’t told us.)

…If the true goal of the Canadians Museum of Human Rights is to create a “national hub for human rights learning and discovery,” shouldn’t visitors to the museum not be able to file a human rights complaint at the museum itself?

The museum boasts of providing visitors with “an immersive, interactive experience that offers both the inspiration and tools to make a difference in the lives of others.” What could be more “interactive” than a special in-museum kiosque that invited visitor to sue the museum itself under applicable Canadian human rights law?

In special circumstances, visitors to the museum might even be permitted to sue each other — Indians versus “wealthy children of settlers,” and Jews vs. Ukrainians, for instance. Following on the 2013 Ukrainian-Canadian protest described above, human-rights complainants at the museum might also seek injunctive relief to prevent fellow museum-goers from using the bathrooms. Where human rights are at stake, no remedy should be off-limits.

In time, the number of successful human-rights claims against the Canadian Museum of Human Rights might become so enormous that these cases would, themselves, become the subject of an entirely new museum — the Canadian Human Rights Museum-Related Human Rights Museum. And since this, too, would be built on “stolen land,” and would necessarily include some cases and exclude others, the cycle of human rights violation, complaint, litigation and resolution would be guaranteed to blossom anew.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission must establish a special human-rights tribunal to address human-rights complaints pertaining to the presentation of human-rights issues at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights

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Canadian Museum of Human Rights: Letter Regarding Portrayal of World War 1 Internment

2014/09/17 4 Comments

The ongoing challenge in satisfying (or not) everyone at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights as seen in this campaign:

We will be asking our affected communities to refrain from partaking in the opening ceremonies or any subsequent activities at the CMHR until this matter is resolved fairly.

While we welcome the development of a national museum outside the capital region, it is regrettable that the CMHR’s exhibits were developed without sufficient attention being given to key Canadian stories. An enlarged photograph and one short film clip buried in a documentary film does not, in our view, constitute an acceptable treatment of Canada’s first national internment operations.

If your goal is to have a truly inclusive national museum then you must reflect the nation’s multicultural history. The insignificant attention given to First World War era internment operations represents a slight to all of the internees, enemy aliens and their descendants, including Canadians of Ukrainian, Hungarian, Croatian, German, Austrian, Polish, Slovak, Czech, Serbian, Slovene, Bulgarian, and other origins.

Earlier controversies, spearheaded by some of the same people, included the relative portrayal of the Holocaust compared to the Holodomor (starvation of Ukraine under Stalin) – see Discontent remains on CMHR, Holodomor.

As to the portrayal of the internment camps, the Museum has to balance this against other Canadian stories such as the Chinese Head Tax, the “continuous journey” and other immigration restrictions, Japanese Canadian internment and dispersal, and other groups affected during World War II.

I don’t envy the Museum in the choices and decisions it must make.

The Government endowed $10 million to the World War I Internment Fund (more than any other group under the Community Historical Recognition Program) along with a Parks Canada $3-4 million project at Banff (Cave and Basin) to educate visitors about the or one of the first internment camps in Canada.

Picking on one aspect while not acknowledging the broader picture, while legitimate, seems a bit excessive.

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Canada’s human rights museum was meant as a unifying force, but, so far, has only inspired criticism

2013/09/28 Leave a comment

Good overview of some of the criticism from the various communities on how their particular historical experience is portrayed in Canada’s national human rights museum in Winnipeg, opening next year. There is no way to satisfy any or all of the groups completely, given the nature of their experience and the understandable strong feelings that each of them have on how it is depicted.

And to further complicate matters, each group looks at their experience both in the particular sense, as well as making comparisons with how other groups are portrayed (or not).

However, one positive outcome (hopefully) will be more discussion about the historical experiences of these communities, and improve awareness.

Canada’s human rights museum was meant as a unifying force, but, so far, has only inspired criticism | National Post.

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