Canoo Archives - Page 4 of 8 - Institute for Canadian Citizenship

Meet Canoo member Anique Ellis. Anique Ellis first came to Canada in October of 2007 as an exchange student at Northern Lights College in Fort St. John’s, BC, as part of a cultural exchange program for student-teachers from Jamaica. “That was where I fell in love with Canada,” says Anique Ellis. “The culture [and the people made my decision to migrate to Canada an easy one. When I returned to Jamaica and completed teacher’s college, I wasted no time in starting the process.”

Anique Ellis is excited and proud to be a Canadian citizen. “ I take responsibility for my role as a citizen and ensure that I contribute value to society in whatever capacity I’m able to.”

“Canada is an amazing place to live,” she says.“It isn’t just physically attractive but inclusive, and I appreciate how everyone is treated equally and how all cultures are celebrated and appreciated. To be included is Canadian; to be Canadian is to be included.”

Anique Ellis has visited many provinces and can’t choose a favourite place. “Canada is absolutely breathtaking,” she says, “I have been to Manitoba, Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta, and I’m yet to decide on which is my favourite place! Each province is unique, culturally rich, and has a great deal of things and places to offer, experience, explore and enjoy.”

Typically, Anique Ellis visits venues with her son, and her favourite venue she has visited is the Royal Alberta Museum. “I had an amazing experience at the Royal Alberta Museum,” she says, “I started going in December of 2019 when I took my son. I enjoyed the little areas set up for children to learn and explore, and the different areas to play in the museum. The staff were very kind and welcoming.

“Cultural places such as the Royal Alberta Museum give each Canadian the opportunity to experience each other’s culture, which helps to remove barriers and prejudices, as well as allow for dialogue and acceptance of our differences. That is what makes us unique as Canadians.

“Thanks to Canoo I have gained a deeper appreciation for Canada’s rich history and heritage. Canoo connects history, culture, and entertainment; it has been an amazing experience.”

Canoo gives new Canadian families access to 1400+ arts, culture spaces and parks across Canada. While Canoo is free to use, it’s not free to operate. As a charity, we rely on donations to help keep Canoo available and free for new Canadian citizens. With your generous support, we can help thousands of new Canadians and their family belong. Give the gift of Canoo! Become a monthly donor today.

Physical limitations have accelerated the shift to digital formats, and yet, developing ties with local communities seems more important than ever. As the arts and culture sector continues to focus on these two areas, we look to trailblazers like Indigitization for inspiration.

Indigitization is a program that helps build capacity to digitize and sustain Indigenous knowledge, within Indigenous communities. It is a collaborative initiative between BC Indigenous groups, and academic partners including the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC).

Indigitization began in 2012, and over the past eight years, the multidisciplinary team has developed culturally appropriate access protocols and policies, championed accessible toolkits, and created a community-responsive digitization grant for BC First Nations community knowledge. Indigitization incorporates feedback to continuously adapt its work and approaches participants as partners, convened in 2016 at the Indigitization Futures Forum.

We spoke to Gerry Lawson about this unique model, cultural heritage, culturally appropriate information practices, and sustainable community development.

Let’s begin with some context. Could you tell us why Indigitization was created, and what needs or gaps it responded to?

When the pilot program started, there was very little digitization being done in First Nations organizations, even though there was tremendous need for it. Some community organizations were doing digitization, but it was difficult for them to know if they were meeting digitization best practices. Community organizations hold large and small collections of precious cultural heritage recordings on nearly every format possible. Almost universally there was a feeling in communities that these recordings are too precious to trust to an outside organization. But at the time, there was little guidance on digitization practices and insufficient funding for digitization in general.

Funding that was available to memory institutions often was not available or appropriate for First Nations community collections. These funds required adherence to onerous practices, or providing full and open access to digitized content. Virtually no community-based Indigenous knowledge collection can ethically be made completely openly accessible. On top of western intellectual property concerns, Indigenous knowledge is subject to cultural access protocols, which are unique to each culture. In many ways these protocols had not been implemented in the digital realm.

Additionally, most of the best practices guidelines for audio digitization were written in jargon-heavy language and many were out of date in terms of minimum equipment specifications. Quite simply the equipment specified wasn’t available, the documents were unreadable by anybody other than subject experts, and the “best practices” couldn’t scale into “actual practices”. Community collections managers were paralyzed by both a lack of funding and any clear guidance on how to move forward.

How did Indigitization address these issues?

With the Indigitization pilot project in 2012, we developed an audio-cassette digitization kit that is largely self-contained and is extremely easy to assemble. Accompanying this kit is a (mostly) jargon-free manual designed to help a small organization plan their digitization project and conduct the step by step processes of condition assessments and digitization for preservation. The Irving K Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC), who funded the original pilot project, courageously re-invested in the project to turn the toolkit resources into an ongoing grant program.

We have been able to create a funding process that doesn’t require the First Nations organization to make any recordings publicly accessible. We do ask that communities use their digitized collections as a basis to develop policies for culturally appropriate access. The grant also provides technical training and ongoing support for the duration of their projects. We have been able to modify the grant parameters from cycle to cycle, continually improving it to meet the needs of technical capacity building for these community organizations.

Could you describe what is unique about this program?

I think that our program is unique because of the people who have worked on it. It may look like an academic initiative because of its origins at UBC, but it actually has grassroots beginnings.

We have a core team who stay focused on the changing needs of Indigenous communities. This has allowed for the inclusion of other individuals and organizations to grow the program without losing momentum towards our original goals.

People who have led the development process of our guides, and the program leadership, have had experience working directly for community organizations. The first Indigitization Project Coordinator, Mimi Lam, who assembled many of the guides, got much of her experience at the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. This is where I myself developed many of my digitization practices. Sarah Dupont (Metis) who became the program coordinator after Mimi, used her experience working with community practitioners to develop most of the grant parameters and in-person protocols for our training workshops. Sarah also paid attention to feedback to continually innovate and make the grant process better each round. Erica Hernandez-Read of the UNBC Archives has brought deep relationships with northern communities and helped to develop many new relationships. Lisa Nathan of the UBC iSchool brought her ability to work ethically with students to the project. We have recently welcomed Kayla Lar-son, who has taken over for Sarah as the Program Coordinator. Sarah continues to manage many aspects of the Indigitization Program from her new position as Head of the Xwi7xwa Library at UBC. Many students have contributed real and lasting work to the program, thanks in large part to lessons from early grant funded student involvement.

Cultural heritage is so broad: how do communities determine what they want to digitize?

Cultural heritage is very broad, and even more so for First Nations organizations. There are very few recordings that don’t hold some content related to language, culture and history. Even something as seemingly mundane as recordings of band council meetings will contain prayers, songs and stories.

Some community organizations, such as language programs or schools, also hold very specific collections. This might include recordings of language gatherings, interviews with elders, or structured lessons. Overall, communities have varied collections with structured oral history projects, traditional use study recordings, recordings by linguists or other academics, potlatch recordings or family knowledge recordings. This is exactly the reason why Indigitization targets cultural heritage recordings, rather than “language recordings” or some other more restrictive term.

All of these recordings are important, and we want to allow each community to decide what their priorities are. Communities are all at different stages of addressing the very difficult challenges of language, culture and governance reclamation. Each community addresses these challenges according to local strategies and priorities that will best impact long-term community health. For this reason, communities are in the best position to decide which content in their collections is the highest priority for digitization.

How did you reach communities early on, and how do these relationships evolve as you collaborate through Indigitization?

For the first rounds of Indigitization funding we mostly relied on word of mouth through established relationships and networks. Since there really wasn’t any resource similar to Indigitization when we started, there were many Indigenous organizations who had been looking for this kind of assistance and were ready to start. As the program continued to mature, we reached out through other streams, such as paid advertising through Indigenous technical networks and a radio station in northern BC. Social media is also becoming an increasingly important avenue to connect with our community partners.

We have had many grant recipients, who we like to refer to as partners, receive funding to gain capacities in new areas, or train new people. We have also supported some of these organizations through assistance with other grant applications or letter of support. There are very few organizations that we have worked with that we do not stay in contact with, at least periodically.

In 2016 we organized the Indigitization Futures Forum. A symposium where 23 of our previous community partners joined many of our information management colleagues to talk about successes and gaps of cultural heritage digitization within Indigenous communities. The discussions and feedback from this event have helped us to plan for the future of the Indigitization Program.

How do you bring ethical and cultural appropriate practices into your work? Was this a goal from the onset?

This was absolutely the goal from the start. The ability to implement culturally appropriate practices came from the personal experience of the project team while working directly for or with Indigenous community organizations. Our Indigenous team members also bring a great deal of understanding to the project from very personal perspectives on mechanisms of cultural trauma and loss.

Real culturally appropriate information practices are created by the local community practitioners. I am mostly just omitting the culturally-inappropriate practices from our guides, which have typically dominated the digitization discourse and practice. Things like onerous requirements for funding eligibility, open access requirements, and adherence to western intellectual ownership concepts which do not acknowledge Indigenous rights to access and control of their own cultural heritage.

As a program, we observe many practices and protocols in our communications, and our training workshops that help to build and deepen relationships with communities, as well as to make our community partners feel more welcome and ready to learn while visiting our colonial-academic setting.

Sarah Dupont, our Program Manager through most of our existence, has been the person who fought for, and integrated, most of these practices. Things like having local Indigenous community representatives welcome our participants and participate in knowledge sharing while they discuss their specific projects. Having Indigenous caterers bring the food for most of our shared meals. There are many more examples as this is a core consideration when planning our gatherings.

There is digitization of content on the one hand, and information management of digital heritage as it grows. What is your vision for access to and use of these materials?

Information management is a very expansive field. At the start of our project, we really thought Information management is a very expansive field. At the start of our project, we were helping to address a focused, but critical, part of a larger problem. Digitization has a specific window of success. We will only be able to access equipment to play these formats for a short while longer, and the physical media itself suffers different problems as it ages.

We are currently developing guides to help with other common formats, like VHS, Betamax and open reel audio. These formats are significantly more complicated to digitize than audio-cassette. We are developing more resources to help with basic collections management processes. This is the start of addressing that broader issue of information management. We also have to consider what the scope of our own program should be. We don’t need to solve every problem and many problems are better suited to be addressed by other organizations or teams.

What are some strategies to keep these archives in circulation?

One very important, emerging content management system (CMS) is Mukurtu. Mukurtu is an open-source CMS that focuses on empowering Indigenous communities to manage and share their cultural heritage in appropriate ways. It was originally developed with an Aboriginal community in Australia to manage access using their local protocols, and has since grown to accommodate customization for any Indigenous local protocols. It is far from a perfect system but is a definite trailblazer in helping to scaffold many community organizations into a more structured information management practice. Michael Wynne, a member of the Mukurtu team, sits on our steering committee to better align our shared efforts.

Do you see Indigitization working with other sectors in addition to academia, or with any particular field?

Indigitization began as a multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral project and has always been open to collaboration, where the fit is good. It is a core quality of most of our team members that we challenge the practices that we have been taught. Such collaborations can take the form of structural partnerships, where a new institution becomes a part of the Indigitization team; it can exist as temporary project partnerships where we join with another group to develop new resources or reach new audiences; or it can be an informal relationship where we help each other meet goals without any greater commitments.

The Archives at UNBC has long been a partner, as has the Sustainable Heritage Network based in Washington State University. We have emerging relationships with the First Peoples Cultural Council and with colleagues at Mount Royal University. As we grow and need additional capacities in terms of educational tools, information management systems support and in providing greater reach for our resources, we will likely partner with organizations that have similar goals and are positioned to take on some of these challenges.

Meet Canoo member Angelina Paras.

Angelina chose to move to Canada because “it’s a country that’s both historically relevant yet still nascent in terms of economic and social potential. I feel like there is much for me and my children to learn from and contribute to this country that I chose.”

“What I love most about Canada is its rich ethnic diversity, coupled with an amazing citizenry that has embraced people from all corners of the world. It’s what enticed me to live and raise my children here. In fact, Canada adopts multiculturalism as a national policy. I have felt this from the get go, as minorities’ representation in the workforce and in education is encouraged, added to a plethora of support services for newcomers like me.”

“My favourite place in Canada is my new home and community, because it is symbolic of our immigration journey. But if I had the chance to revisit a place, it would be postcard-pretty Banff in Alberta, because our trip to this picturesque town for our landmark wedding anniversary will always be memorable.”

“I typically visit Canoo venues with my husband and my children, and my mother-in-law who lives in Toronto but stays with us in Winnipeg for a few months each year. The best place I’ve visited using Canoo was the Canadian Human Rights Museum (CMHR). I have visited the CMHR several times in the past, but they always have something new to offer. In July of 2019, I used my Canoo app to see the Mandela exhibit with my friend, who was visiting from Minnesota. That state has its own share of amazing museums, but I was proud to show her around the world’s first museum dedicated to human rights, and we were both fortunate to view the Mandela exhibit which was ongoing at the time. She is an educator, while I work for the Manitoba Legislature, which means we not only have to be curious for personal curiosity’s sake but we need to be updated on all matters political! The effort that goes into curating and researching for these exhibits is remarkable, and as a Winnipeger, I am fortunate to have easy access to this excellent edifice.

“Although I work for both the city and provincial governments, have been summoned for jury duty, volunteered at countless events and voted twice since we arrived, active citizenship can be many other things. It can be as simple as welcoming new citizens to the community or watching a game at your kids’ school. It can be sharing a personal traditional recipe or lending a hand to a neighbour in need. When you keep a mindset of trying to give more than what you take from the society you live in, that, to me, is what active citizenship is all about.

“Inclusion to me doesn’t just mean “tolerance,” which I feel gives it a sense of “putting up with”. Inclusion is a deliberate welcoming of others’ culture — stepping back and having an open mind;to give recognition and genuinely have appreciation for the added value that others can give.

“Cultural places serve as living dioramas, giving us a glimpse of other people’s ways of life. Awareness opens the path to inclusion because people would come to realize that there is a greater society in which they live, and that the languages, abodes, food, beliefs, music, attires, traditions and customs in that greater society are legion. If anything, cultural places are kaleidoscopes of this remarkably diverse world we live in.

“Canoo has opened the doors of not-to-be-missed places to newcomers like me. Through Canoo and others’ generosity, our family has been able to take an introductory peek into museums and national parks, which we would definitely visit again in the future.”

*Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Meet Canoo member Amjad Baig. Amjad moved to Canada because he believes it is a country where “there is unlimited opportunity and potential where your dreams can become reality.”

“Canada is a truly multicultural country with a rich ethnic diversity,” he says, “You feel welcomed and belonging here. The gorgeous scenery views of the untouched and natural environment are breathtaking and next to none I have seen so far.”

Amjad lives in Toronto, but his favourite place in Canada is on the West Coast. “Even though I stay in Toronto, two hours north of Vancouver by road lies our favorite place – Whistler,” he says, “The natural beauty, unique mountain lifestyle and stunning scenery is the best escape like nowhere else. Finding yourself in the mountains, breathing in the wild air you just get swept up by the unique energy. There are always some adventures that can inspire and challenge you anytime of the year in Whistler.”

During his time as a Canoo member in 2019, Amjad visited Casa Loma with his family, one of his favourite cultural venues in Toronto. “We went to Casa Loma on the 25th of August, 2019. It was our family day out,” he says, “We saw some of the most amazing things like the Great Hall, The Library, The Estate Gardens, The Round Room, Sir Henry Pellatt’s Suite, Lady Pellatt’s Suite, The Windsor Room, The Pellatt Board Room, Queen’s Own Rifle Museum, the stables and finally the Automotive Museum. The experience was as if you traveled back in time, at times we would stand and just imagine what life would have been during those times, such an amazing history. Our favorite was a secret storage area beside the fireplace.”

Amjad believes that cultural venues like Casa Loma can help build more inclusive societies: “Coming from various cultural places and background help to understand others better, learn through connections making it a better resilient, stronger and socially inclusive community.”

“Canoo is so very thoughtful and such a beautiful gesture to give every new citizen to experience and learn a little more about the land, food, culture, nature and connect with people,” says Amjad, “ Canoo celebrates the experience of being truly Canadian, not just to celebrate a new citizen’s journey from landing to becoming a citizen but recognizing & rewarding the hustle and the contribution during that period. Visiting the parks and Casa Loma was simply beautiful. Thank you Canoo for the memorable experience!”

Meet Canoo member Janega Boltiador-Gallant. She immigrated to Canada from the Philippines, and currently, she resides on the East Coast in Prince Edward Island, her favourite place in Canada, with her husband. Janega chose to move to Canada because it is her “dream country” and to “have a better life.”

“What I love most about Canada is that it is a very productive country,” says Janega, “And it’s the place where I met the love of my life! I am looking forward to many more years here spending our lives together with good health and more happiness.”

Janega typically visits Canoo venues with her husband. The places she’s enjoyed visiting most using the Canoo app are the Anne of Green Gables Museum at the Green Gables Heritage Place and Skmaqn–Port-la-Joye–Fort Amherst National Historic Site, PEI.

“I went a few times to the Anne of Green Gables heritage site with my family,” says Janega. “I love learning about how the story was made. We went walking on the trail — it was a pretty good experience. We saw all the stuff that makes up the story at the Green Gables House, and we got to get dressed up in Anne’s clothes. We even took some pictures. It was very cool.”

Janega agrees that cultural spaces, such as heritage sites and parks, are important experiences for building a sense of inclusion and belonging for new citizens in Canada. “Cultural places will let you share your culture from where you’re from,” says Janega, “And to be included in social gatherings with a bunch of people from different countries allows you to learn about, and experience, their cultures. This kind of inclusion means I can be part of the success of this country.”

Janega highly recommends that all new Canadian citizens download and use the Canoo app! “It will give you more information about lots of wonders in this world and the beautiful places that you can visit,” she says. “It is very helpful!”

In advance of Canada Day, the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC) spoke with Joy Abasta, a new Canadian citizen originally from the Philippines, about what Canada Day means to her and how she planned to mark the day.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

ICC: How are you planning on celebrating Canada Day?
Joy Abasta: I’ve been doing a lot of reflection, with Indigenous people’s day being June 21st and it being so close to Canada Day, which is July 1st. Before, I always celebrated Canada Day because as an immigrant it feels like you can finally celebrate with Canadians. Like I’m here and everybody’s free and we are all trying to be fair and polite, and we are known from the other parts of the world as friendly, and always saying ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry.’ But when I started school in September 2019 and dived into Indigenous studies, that’s when I realized that there’s a particularly dark history in Canada. Now, I feel a bit conflicted.

My partner and I were just talking this morning…We asked ourselves how we can celebrate both Indigenous cultures and Canada being Canada, and he said that, ‘oh, you know what? We can go for a drive in Squamish because there’s a lot of history in Squamish, as well. And then we can go and find some Indigenous installation art or hikes and whatnot.’ Also, there’s an app that was created by Dr. Rudy Reimer, it’s called the ímesh app. If you open the app, it’s going to tell you which territory you’re on while you’re walking. It’s going to tell you what the name is and what their traditional work is, so for example, berry picking, or fishing and what not. So we’ll probably do that.

What initially drove you to learn about Indigenous cultures and communities?
I moved here in 2014, and when I moved here I didn’t know anything about Indigenous culture. I started to volunteer at different organizations and in 2016, I volunteered at the Vancouver Community Policing Centre in the west end. They were so big about this walk for reconciliation, so I signed up for that because I needed my volunteer hours for the month, and then I realized it’s for the Indigenous communities. I think that’s when it all really started for me, it opened up the conversation and curiosity.

Before I moved here, I had heard so much good stuff about Canada; that, ‘hey, this is better than the United States because of health care,’ and then when I landed here and found out what I did at the policing centre, I was exposed to what happened to Indigenous cultures and what has happened to them — the assimilation, the genocide. It was horrifying. It’s always hard to discuss, even with my students at school, because I’m also just learning. But we all have to talk about those difficult histories. Since then, every time I go out and discover or explore a new city in Canada, I try to make it a point to see if there’s an Indigenous installation art, or maybe a museum, or anything that celebrates the Indigenous history of the communities that live there.

What pushes you to continue this learning?
I see similarities with what happened in Canada and in the Philippines. Because the Philippines were also colonized by the Spaniards. And being in the Philippines, I’d always heard about the Philippines being colonized, but that’s basically it. I didn’t realize the weight of that term until I moved here, until I realized what happened with colonization and Indigenous people in Canada. But Canada has been my home, and maybe I’m projecting, but I also want to be an ally of Indigenous people. I can never connect with the trauma they had, but as a student of public health — and hopefully eventually to become a public health official — I think it’s really important for my career to always be thinking about BIPOC. Here in Vancouver, or here in British Columbia, there’s still not a lot of conversations happening, so I wanted to become an ally to try to scratch the surface, and try to influence the people around me to reconsider what’s happening around us. A lot of the time people can ignore what’s happening to other people around them, especially if they’re not of similar backgrounds or cultures.

How did you learn about Indigenous communities and cultures?
If I go somewhere else, like Whistler, I’ll always go to museums that include Indigenous history and culture. I think museums were my initial resource on Indigenous people. Then I started school in September of 2019, and I owe it to the professors and supervisors that I had, because I’m also a TA [teacher’s assistant] for Indigenous studies. Dr. Joyce Schneider and Dr. Rudy Reimer and Dr. Madeline Knickerbocker are very knowledgeable about Indigenous studies. Drs. Rudy and Joyce are members of the Indigenous community and Madeline is a white settler who has been doing about 10 years of work on Stó:lō communities in British Columbia. I”m really grateful I was able to have these sources.

How is celebrating Indigenous cultures part of celebrating Canada Day? How is it not?
We must celebrate Indigenous culture and Indigenous people and communities on Canada Day. I don’t know if celebrate is the correct term, but basically just acknowledging that they were here first, for at least 12,000 years before the white settlers or the colonizers. What can we do with reconciliation and other acts of decolonization every day so that we can make celebrating Canada Day worth it.

How have you been connecting with Indigenous culture and art during the pandemic?
It’s been hard, of course. There’s a ton of resources online and I was fortunate enough to still be a TA, so as I go along I still feel I’m connected to my allyship with the Indigenous people. So what I’ve done this summer so far is learning how to say specific words or terms in an Indigenous language. I think there’s about 600+ Indigenous languages in Canada, but here in Vancouver the language is Hul’q’umi’num’. I’m trying to learn how to say hello and ‘thank you, you know, very basic words in their language. Indigenous languages are dying; not a lot of Indigenous Peoples know how to use the languages, because of colonization and assimilation. So, for me, I just want to try to make an effort to learn these common terms because language is a really big part of everyone’s culture.

The current circumstances demand that we try harder to address the incontestable reality that is systemic racism. In this issue, we would like to pose the question: what role can professional training and academic education play in preparing museum professionals to counter values, practices and systems that perpetuate racism in our cultural institutions?

We spoke to Megan Sue-Chue-Lam, Chloé Houde, Dominica Tang, and Denise Tenio, who in February 2019 created the Museum Professionals of Colour (MPOC). Together, they are a student-run organization at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information aimed at addressing the lack of racial diversity within their Master of Museum Studies program (MMSt). In this interview, they talked to us about their journey, their work, and their vision for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) in museums.

[Above image: Detox Panel held in partnership with the Museum Studies Student Association. Wendy Ng, J’net Ayay Qwa Yak Sheelth, and Just John Samuels.]

Why did you create Museum Professionals of Colour (MPOC)?

Megan: The museum field in Canada, which includes our program, is predominantly white. I wanted to talk to other POCs in our program because I was feeling really isolated in our classes and unsure about whether they would really prepare me for my career as a non-white person. I say POCs because the Black and Indigenous representation is extremely slim, and not everyone wanted or was able to be involved in this group. The camaraderie between all our peers is quite good, but the content and facilitation of our classes is emphatically white and Eurocentric. All of our professors are white and being a BIPOC museum professional is not something that they can advise on. So, feeling a sense of connection, validation, and support was my main motivation.

The other (reason) was that I wanted to create a group in order to make our own network of BIPOC museum professionals, in order to ensure that future BIPOC students in the program wouldn’t have to go through the same sense of isolation. And now, having heard from BIPOC alumni, it really seems like this is something that a lot of students have been wanting. Ultimately, we want to see ourselves in the museum field because we really do believe in what museums are able to accomplish.

Is there any precedent for this type of student association?

Dominica: There was a casual support group for students of colour in the MMSt program a few years ago, but it dissolved once the members graduated. To ensure that future museum studies students of colour would have a structure of support, we decided to put down roots in the school and register as a ratified UofT student organization. Globally, there are a number of large and independent organizations that interrogate the lack of diversity in museums. One that we looked to was Museum Detox, an independent organization that supports Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic museum professionals, as a model for what we aspire to be in Canada.

Denise: In Canada, however, most DEIA committees are formed within a specific museum by their staff and work exclusively within their institution. We have yet to see an organization dedicated to DEIA in our Canadian museums; if you know of one, please send them our way! Within the Faculty of Information, we have found support in our Master of Information counterpart, the Diversity Working Group.

Megan: We are also limited by the lack of diversity in our group, which is telling of the general state of our program and the field. We are not Black, nor are we Indigenous, and we do not presume to speak on behalf of Black or Indigenous peoples. We aim to use our light-skinned and white privilege and platform to amplify others who speak from their own experiences. While we engage with perspectives outside of our own through our initiatives, we understand that this is not enough to create a fully inclusive environment. We truly hope that future MPOC committees at UofT can surpass our own capabilities and provide wider representation than we do.

This is a new initiative: what has the process been like so far?

Chloé: Overall, this process has been a whirlwind (a good one), through which we’ve discovered that the issues we want to tackle in our faculty are present on a much larger scale across Canadian museums.

We’ve been lucky to find ourselves in an environment with supportive peers and fellow student groups who believe in what we are striving for. Our program’s Museum Studies Student Association supported us from the start; they brought us in to collaborate on a panel, which was our first big event. In March, we co-hosted the panel, entitled “Museum Detox: Cleansing institutions of unconscious bias and developing anti-racist praxis”. Our incredible panelists were Wendy Ng, J’net Ayay Qwa Yak Sheelth, and Just John Samuels. This event helped us establish MPOC as a serious student group at the Faculty of Information and put us on the faculty’s radar.

We’ve also found support and collaboration with other DEIA-minded student groups in our faculty, such as the Accessibility Interests Working Group, the Diversity Working Group, and the Indigenous Connections Working Group. We have similar goals and it’s been empowering to work with these groups on multiple projects over the last few months, and know that we can present as a united front when faced with difficulties.

Social media has been another way for us to find like-minded and supportive people and expand our horizons as a group. It’s been amazing to find a community outside of our faculty who believe in our mission and values and want to help us make the museum sector in Canada more inclusive and equitable.

What data can you share with us about DEIA in your program, or in the museum sector?

Dominica: We can’t provide much data on the museum sector because there aren’t any comprehensive studies coming out of Canada! In a field that champions tangible data over lived experiences, the lack of data is a hindrance to DEIA work in Canadian museums. Around one in six (approximately 17%) people in our program is a visible minority. Compared to Toronto’s 51% visible minority population, our program is disproportionately white and does not reflect the diversity of Toronto at all.

Denise: Recently, we collected data from 125 Faculty of Information students and alumni to identify the extent of DEIA in the school. This was a collaborative effort with other student groups, namely the Diversity Working Group, Accessibility Interests Working Group, Indigenous Connections Working Group, the Master of Information Student Council, and the Museum Studies Student Association. From our pool of 125 respondents, we found that: (1) less than 30% of respondents feel supported by peers and professors, (2) less than 4% of respondents agree that there aren’t enough courses on BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+ and disabled experiences; (3) less than 1% of respondents feel that classroom conversations on colonization, use of racial language, and accessibility needs are facilitated properly; (4) only 14% of respondents feel comfortable participating in these conversations; and (5) 86% of respondents agree that staff and students would benefit from anti-oppression training. These findings from the faculty include, but are not exclusive to, the MMSt program.

Lack of diversity at cultural institutions is a long-standing issue. What kind of academic training could contribute to solving this problem? What role can museum professionals play?

Chloé: We believe that addressing issues in museums needs to begin where museum professionals are being trained, and consist of more than theoretical discussions about our future workplaces. To this end, we’ve been striving to diversify our faculty on multiple levels. First, the student body needs to be more diverse, and it is the faculty’s responsibility to recruit and admit more BIPOC students. Second, the hiring of BIPOC staff and faculty would make an important difference as well. However, to avoid tokenization and harmful work and learning environments, the faculty also needs to develop a culture of inclusivity and equity in which BIPOC staff and students can flourish, in order to mitigate racism or discrimination. Third, diversifying our course offerings and our syllabi is something we greatly hold to heart, so that we can have a well-rounded education that will actually help us in our future careers.

Megan: But as much as academic training can create a good foundation for action, it really comes down to that – action. All the training in the world won’t amount to anything unless it’s used to actually make space and amplify marginalized voices. The work is hard, and will require people to sacrifice their sense of comfort and security, but really showing up for people means shouldering some of the burden of the fight they’ve been taking on their entire lives. This can mean challenging people on their racism when BIPOC aren’t in the room, letting BIPOC take the lead on projects and supporting their work, even stepping down from a position if you notice that your leadership team is mostly white or non-Black and non-Indigenous.

Chloé: To echo what Megan said, these kinds of actions are how institutional racism can be tackled and eradicated. This type of work is just the start, and is not a list of items on a checklist. It is a process that needs to be constant, ongoing, and present in everything we do, in theory and practice.

What do you envision for MPOC?

Denise: We have two main goals for MPOC right now that we’ll really be striving for throughout the entire upcoming school year. First, we want to ensure that MPOC continues to live on at the faculty even after we’ve graduated the MMSt program. As mentioned before, this organization is foremostly a support group for museum professionals of colour. Founding MPOC has helped us not only have a voice to speak out against the systemic racism that exists within the museum sector and in our program, but it’s allowed us to feel more seen and heard than we did prior to MPOC forming. We want future BIPOC students to experience that same level of support and visibility during their time as an MMSt student. And once they graduate, they know they’ll have a community they can turn to for guidance in navigating this field as a marginalized museum professional.

Dominica: Our second goal is to establish ourselves as an independent organization outside of the UofT structure. We’re extremely passionate and committed to the work we’ve been doing and definitely want to continue with MPOC after graduating our program next year. We want to expand this group nationally and, through delivering programs, events, and other campaigns, we hope to create a larger network of support for museum professionals of colour across Canada. We still have many things to think about, but we draw a lot of our inspiration from Museum Hue and Museum Detox, as well as other organizations like archive and library associations who have chapters across different schools. That’s something we’d like to do as well – set up chapters of MPOC within the various museum studies programs throughout Canada.

What do you envision for yourselves as museum professionals?

Dominica: Ideally, DEIA work would be a perspective that everyone uses in all museums and across all aspects of museum work. Whatever we end up doing, whether it be collections management or visitor research, our work will always relate to DEIA. I enjoy working in the public-facing sector of the museum particularly in immersive and multisensory programming. At the moment, this takes the form of historic cooking, but I hope to employ multisensory experiences as a means to make museums more empathetic, inclusive, and accessible.

Megan: I also enjoy frontline museum work, and my background and where I envision myself is in education and public programming. That’s typically where you see the most direct community engagement, which is very rewarding, and it’s where a lot of BIPOC museum workers find themselves. Unfortunately, we’ve seen through COVID that these positions are also some of the most expendable. That’s why DEIA is crucial to all aspects of museum work. The way museums are run isn’t equitable, and BIPOC remain on the margins. We really need to see more BIPOC in leadership and executive positions in order for real change to happen.

Denise: While I also really enjoy public programming, I see myself pursuing a career in interpretive planning and being more involved in the exhibition development process. For those who don’t know what interpretive planners do, if curators provide the information, interpretive planners organize that information to create a storyline and figure out how to effectively communicate it to the audience. When planning an exhibition, interpretive planners have to ask themselves questions like: Whose stories are we telling? Whose stories are not being included? From whose voices are these stories being told? Is this information/text/strategy accessible for all? That said, DEIA is so intrinsic to this type of museum work.

Chloé: Just like Denise, I am also interested in interpretive planning when it comes to museum work. I have an appreciation for collections management, but I believe interpretive planning and its focus on how visitors learn and retain information is where I see myself in the future. As mentioned by Denise, DEIA work is central to interpretive planning, and should be central to all museum work. I also have a love for oral history and believe it to be an underutilized methodology in museums; the values intrinsic to oral history (like sharing authority) can greatly help museums create lasting bonds with community members and make museums places where people see their histories valued and taken care of. As a white woman, it is my responsibility to constantly work towards anti-racism in myself and everything I do.

Meet Canoo member Violeta. She chose to move to Canada for the “natural beauty, mountains and lakes, as well as because of the strong economy and plenty of business opportunities.”

What Violeta loves most about Canada is the “people, the diversity, friendliness, and last but not least – poutine!” Her favourite place in Canada is Banff National Park in Alberta.

The best place that Violeta has visited using her Canoo app has been the Montreal Science Center, which she visited with her family. “Everyone in the family is interested in doing simple experiments and hands-on activities, and the center offers plenty of those,” she says. “The exhibitions we saw were amazing and entertaining both for kids and adults. Before we knew it, we spent almost three hours there and when we left we felt like there is so much more to see. Awesome place!”

For Violeta, active citizenship is “contributing to society by being kind and respectful, taking care of the environment, helping others and making a positive difference whenever presented with the opportunity.” She believes that cultural spaces help us build more diverse and inclusive societies: “Cultural places give us another perspective,” she says, “They help us see the world through the eyes of others; it is a way for us to remember the past and all the lessons it holds.”

“I have had a very positive experience using Canoo,” says Violeta, “Having the chance to visit all these places (some of which I probably wouldn’t have visited without the Canoo pass) is definitely expanding my horizons.”

Canoo member Joy Abasta became a Canadian citizen in February 2020. She says she chose Canada because of the country’s diversity, move towards inclusion, and the high respect for others’ rights and freedoms.

As a new citizen, Joy is actively and continuously learning about the Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and she knows it is both a privilege and a responsibility to be learning and living in the unceded Coast Salish Territories. She also believes that while immigrants and new citizens have much to contribute to Canadian society, it is also important to acknowledge that we all have to work together towards decolonization and reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples to be a truly inclusive and progressive country. As a public health leader, she is an advocate and an ally in achieving culturally competent and gender-sensitive communities in British Columbia, and hopefully, in all of Canada.

Joy’s favourite place in Canada is Whitehorse, Yukon. “A week after my oath of citizenship in February 2020, my partner, Wesley, and I flew to Whitehorse, Yukon,” she explained, “There, we chased the Aurora Borealis, we met a Canadian ranger, and experienced dogsledding and snowmobiling. I learned more about trapping and got to feel and try on clothings made of real arctic fox, mink, and wolf pelts. The most unforgettable of them all was when we visited the Beringia Interpretive Centre where we learned more about Indigenous Peoples, human migration theory through the Bering ice bridge, and admired the remains of woolly mammoth, giant sloths, and saber-toothed cats.”

When travel restrictions due to the pandemic are over, Joy plans to visit other provinces and use her Canoo membership in museums and art galleries. She hopes to see the beauty and hidden gems of Winnipeg, Toronto, and the Maritimes.

Joy believes that cultural places and public art installations play a major role towards awareness and inclusivity: “These cultural places serve as a medium where we learn the country’s history, its traditions, cultures, and even the dark past. Social inclusion will only be achieved if we learn from history and that we truly welcome everyone regardless of their skin colour, race, gender, and social class.”

Canoo member Mariam Ghaffar immigrated from Pakistan to Canada about five years ago. She chose to settle in Calgary, AB, in part due to the simple fact she had family in the city. She received her Canadian citizenship in June of 2019. Mariam is excited to be an active citizen, and for her, active citizenship means “fulfilling my duties and knowing my rights” as a Canadian.

What Mariam loves most about Canada (and Calgary in particular) is the friendly people, the vast diversity and multiculturalism, and the clean environment and natural areas. She regularly uses the Canoo app to gain free, day-use admission to national and provincial parks in Alberta for herself and her three children. Of the many she’s visited, her favourites are Jasper National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park. “It’s so beautiful!” explained Mariam about Waterton Larks, “The lakes, the rocks, everything is magical!”

Although all national and provincial parks are temporarily closed for now, Mariam is excited to get back outside when the weather is warmer and the restrictions are lifted. She hopes to get in a few more visits with her Canoo app (which she calls “excellent!”) before her membership expires.