A settler-colonial gift: Amber Dean, Angela Failler, ‘”An Amazing Gift”? Memory entrepreneurship, settler colonialism and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’, Memory Studies, 2019 | settler colonial studies blog

28.4.19

A settler-colonial gift: Amber Dean, Angela Failler, ‘”An Amazing Gift”? Memory entrepreneurship, settler colonialism and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’, Memory Studies, 2019 | settler colonial studies blog: Critiques of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ present occupation of Indigenous land and the museum (and City of Winnipeg)’s ongoing reliance on natural resources extracted at the expense of Indigenous communities remain as difficult or inassimilable knowledge. Juxtaposing Indigenous, cultural and economic critiques with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ advancement of memory entrepreneurship, our article explores the inter-implication of consumer culture, capitalism, settler colonialism and the museum’s ability to contribute to societal change. We conclude by turning to the activism of members of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, arguing that their calls for access to safe water and an all-season road in and out of their community pose both an economic and a political challenge to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and its brand of memory entrepreneurship by insisting that gestures to include and proffer representational forms of recognition to Indigenous peoples must simultaneously attend to sovereigntist calls for redistribution of land and resources in order to meaningfully address the historical and ongoing injustices of settler colonialism.