No Single Answer

"The Canadian Museum For Human Rights, run by wealthy children of settlers, decided local Indigenous people's heritage does not deserve the same respect as their own ancestors and history.. [It is] a decision rooted in cultural superiority, arrogance and privilege ... The CMHR was constructed with the same Eurocentric arrogance that stole peoples' lands, food sources and eventually their children; Eurocentric arrogance that determines that their pet projects are more worthy of public funds than affordable housing and justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women."
Kimlee Wong, Rabble.ca

There's a boatload of spiteful hate, a balance on the scales of rewriting history to suit the sourly venomous victim culture so popular with the left of today; the other side of the balance is its vitriolic spewing at the Canadian Museum For Human Rights whose purpose is to highlight human rights, using the 20th Century atrocity called the Holocaust as the epitome of the destruction of basic human rights: the right to exist, in its genocidal approach to cleansing the world of Jews.

Acclamation for the accomplishment of planning and building such an edifice dedicated to improving the lot of humans among other humans has trickled in from all manner of sources. Condemnations have thundered in from predictable sources, from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, from disgruntled aboriginals, from Palestinians, from Canadians for Genocide Education protesting that the museum was built on "stolen" aboriginal land.


The elevation of one horrific mass atrocity (the Holocaust) over all other seemingly similar attempts to wipe out an ethnic, tribal, religious group has soured many people and groups with their own particular ax to grind on the purpose and usefulness of the museum. "There is no single answer" is the mantra of the museum, to accommodate all the complaints, doubts and concerns about its function and presentation.



Close to equal space is given over to the other victims of Nazi persecution and ghoulish brutality as that portrayed for Jews, with representation of homosexuals, Romani, the disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses and political activists all given their due through their suffering from genocidal totalitarianism. Controversy about the aboriginal content lies mostly, it would appear, in that there are no direct affirmations of what First Nations contend; that Canada has engaged in a genocide against them.

"Until this is rectified, we'll support the museum from a distance", huffed a hip hop band, enraged over the "misrepresentation and downplay of the genocide that was experienced by Indigenous people in Canada by refusing to name it genocide." This, from a tribal community that holds its members who marry outside the fold are committing miscegenation, committing themselves to the racist inclination to isolate and condemn, to refuse to allow mixed marriage entry to reserve land.

The five noted genocides; the Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Armenia and the Holodomor, are all represented, but the Ukrainian Canadian Congress is insulted that the Jewish genocide gets top treatment and the panel on Stalin's forced starvation of Ukrainians was located too close to public toilets, which was, presumably, where the Holocaust presentation should logically have been situated.



The museum's provision of an opportunity for "an immersive, interactive experience that offers both the inspiration and tools to make a difference in the lives of others", appears to have inspired many to kvetch and moan that their very dear-to-their-hearts tragedy has not been sufficiently addressed. It addresses issues as disparate, but reflective of human rights as genocide, slavery, suffrage, health care, labour rights.

A "Garden of Contemplation" with winding paths and gentle pools of water offers space for reflection on what museum-goers have seen, leaving them to indulge in peaceful reflection. What more could be found wanting?