Settler mythologies: Grace Kwan, ‘Colonialism and National Myth-Making in Canadian Museums’, The Society, 5, 1, 2020

settler colonial studies blog

Abstract: Canadian national mythology promotes the widespread idea of a peaceful, tolerant, multicultural nation built by and composed of immigrants. This mythology functions to sustain the ongoing settler colonialism and genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Using a case study of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba, I demonstrate how such a national mythology denies Indigenous claims to the space, relegates Indigenous peoples to the pre-modern or already extinct, and erases their resistance to and struggles with colonization from the here and now. Institutions such as the Museum operate as part of a larger national and political context which nurtures and sustains nationalist mythologies establishing Canada’s white settler society.

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