Time to Act: Rohingya Voices

ABSTRACT

More and more museums are engaging with historically marginalized populations to better tell their stories. Developed through activist curatorship, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ exhibition Time to Act: Rohingya Voices represents an attempt to move towards a more inclusive and democratic museum practice. It also raises important questions for institutions trying to engage ethically with historically marginalized communities. What strategies can museums adopt to better address the needs of the historically excluded people they intend to serve? Are museums meaningfully opening up spaces for new actors to participate in their work? This article describes the development of an exhibition co-curated with the Rohingya community in Canada and the challenges arising from both the lack of diversity of museum personnel involved in decision-making processes and the absence of institutional anti-oppression and social justice frameworks. This article concludes that increasing diversity in museum leadership; providing adequate anti-oppression and social justice training; openly discussing racism, implicit biases, whiteness and other forms of privilege; as well as adopting clear ethical guidelines for engaging with historically marginalized communities are a necessary starting point towards redressing historical injustices and the unequal distribution of power in museum institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Representation
• historically marginalized
• exclusion
• institutional racism
• empowerment
• white gaze
• whiteness
• anti-oppression
• human rights
• privilege

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Armando Perla is Project Leader in the team developing the new Swedish Museum of Migration and Democracy. He was also part of the curatorial team that developed the inaugural exhibitions of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, where he worked as a curator for 9 years. Perla is a board member of the ICOM International Committee on Ethical Dilemmas (IC-Ethics).

Yasmin Ullah is a Rohingya human rights activist who fled from Northern Rakhine state as a child in 1995. She remained stateless in Thailand until she resettled in Canada as a refugee. She has been advocating and raising awareness about the Rohingya genocide since 2017. Ullah currently serves as the president of the Rohingya Human Rights Network.

Notes

1 The reason for the use of the name Burma is in reference to the timeline from 1948 to 1989 when the country was called Burma. The ruling military junta officially changed the country's name, from Burma to Myanmar, after violently suppressing the uprising of a pro-democracy movement in 1988 where thousands were killed. The international community, at the time, had a mixed reaction; some welcomed the change, but some, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the military junta. The use of the name Burma then was seen as an act of defiance against the military by the pro-democracy movement who rejected the name Myanmar and any other changes made by the military regime.

2 Radio speech by Prime Minister U Nu on 25 September 1954 at 8 pm. A similar public speech was made by the Prime Minister and Defense Minister U Ba Swe at Maungdaw and Buthidaung respectively, on 3 and 4 November 1959.

3 The UN International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar concluded in its September 2018 report that there were ‘reasonable grounds, that the factors allowing the inference of genocidal intent are present. It is now for a competent prosecutorial body and court of law to investigate and adjudicate cases against specific individuals to determine individual guilt or innocence.’ The Mission was created to investigate the systematic persecution of Rohingya by the Myanmar military.

4 Referring to Rohingya.

5 Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (2018).

6 Freire (2018).