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Think of history
as stories about the past,

but it's always about
the future in my mind.

Satwinder:
The worst thing we can do

is for our generations
not to know where we've been.

Somewhere, someone
is gonna want to know.

To see yourself in a place
where history is captured

and told, it has such power.

Henry:
Power and archives

are inextricable.

Who decides what gets kept?

Five years ago, the kind of
thing that I'm saying publicly

in this documentary right now

could get you in
a lot of trouble.

The provincial archives have
the power of life and death

over events in BC history.

Magnus:
We're supposed to be neutral.

That's not possible.

How can our own people,
whether we're Indigenous,

Black, people of colour,
how can we tell our own stories?

Why can't we tell
our own stories?

Satwinder:
We were absent

from so many places
when actually we were there.

We were present.

Imogene:
Nobody's saying it's your fault.

But one needs to learn
these things

so you're not repeating
the past.

Henry:
What isn't archived?

What is unarchived?
What is forgotten?

What is lost?
What doesn't belong?

Magnus:
When we don't

collect these things,

when we don't
make these records accessible,

it doesn't get included
in history.

Chung:
I believe that all institutions,

colonial institutions, need to
be on the way for a revolution.

The time of reckoning has come.

♪ Takin' a walk
down to the bookstore ♪

♪ On a lonely,
boring day for me ♪

♪ Can't wait to see
my latest boyfriend ♪

♪ Under the covers
waiting to be free ♪

♪ With thumbtacks
and a pair of scissors ♪

♪ I'll sweat real hard
'til way past 3:00, yeah ♪

♪ Coverin' everything
but the bedroom window ♪

♪ With pictures ♪

My name is Ron Dutton.

I manage the BC Gay
and Lesbian Archives.

♪ Hot magazine ♪

♪ Not hard to dream ♪

♪ Where books are seen ♪

♪ I come real clean ♪

My strategy was to
collect everything.

♪ Oh, baby, oh, whoa,
I love him so ♪

I don't say, "Oh, that's
a good story, I'll keep it,

and that one isn't so I won't."

I keep everything.

Wet t-shirt contests at Numbers
Cabaret, trivia, you know,

and you think,
"Who cares?

You know, in 50 years,
is anyone gonna care?"

Well, yeah.

What I've found is that that
has been a smart thing to do.

We all have presumptions,
we all have assumptions,

we all have limitations
to our knowledge.

None of us can ever
yank ourselves

completely out of
the historical moment

to be utterly neutral
in what we collect.

This is the poster collection.

There's a remarkable difference
between what posters looked like

in the 1970s and what
they look like today.

So these are all
poor people postering.

Simple, simple.

They didn't have a lot
of money to spend.

I came to Vancouver
in 1975, in my early 20s.

I had just come out
of university

and three or four years
of working at my first job

as a librarian.

I arrived in the big city for
the first time ready to let go.

I wanted to get
passionately involved with

the politics of the time.

The whole of the '70s
and the late '60s

had been
a hugely political time.

The women's movement
is in full force.

The anti-war movement
against the war in Vietnam

was explosive on campus.

The Black Rights movement
in the United States

was very, very much
in the forefront

of everybody's minds.

And then,
beginning in 1970-71,

the initial movements
of the Gay Liberation Front.

People were picketing and they
were forming organizations,

they were publishing newspapers,
they were writing manifestos.

There were probably eight or 10
gay rights organizations

at that moment
happening in the city.

The Gay Rights Union,
Gay Alliance for Equality,

Lesbian Mothers' Defense Fund.

At the same time, there is
a massive bar scene going on.

So there is both the social
and the political,

and they're working together
in tandem.

Brilliant time
to be young and gay.

♪ Everybody is a gay ♪

You were being suddenly,
willingly out for the first time

in your life,
and it was intoxicating.

So there was I in the middle
of it all, but also with a sense

that we were on the cusp
of something new,

that society
was being pushed very hard

and was going to
have to make changes

to the way that it regarded
gays and lesbians

and that we were
going to make that happen.

I began to get really
concerned about that

because everybody was out there
having a grand old time

and no one was doing the filing.

And everybody's busy,
they have a demonstration

and then they move on
to the next thing.

They're not thinking about
writing it all down so that

this history we were making
would actually have a record.

So I simply began to do that.

Every handout and brochure and
newspaper article and poster

that came to hand, tossing it
in a box with a date on it.

Very quickly, the box became
four boxes and then eight boxes

and I realized some sort of
structure needed to be imposed

on this material
if it was going to be usable

by anyone at a future date.

So I began to do that.

Gay Tide is the newspaper

put out by the Gay Alliance
Toward Equality,

Gale Force.

It's the newsletter of the Gay
and Lesbian Educators of BC.

A competitor from the Gay Games.

A pennant from Team Berlin.

Here is a Dim Sum Dykes
Bamboo Triangle,

which is a women's group
of East Asian-Canadian women.

These incredible zines that are
photocopies of material,

poetry, raving,
they're often really obscene,

and they are always
highly confrontational.

With community archives,
it's the community stepping up

and filling a gap
that the other archives

should have been doing.

Most government archives
are over 100 years old.

Academic archives are usually
at least 50 years old.

So because we have this
really old legacy,

you're dealing with
predecessors who were,

in almost all cases, racist,
homophobic, transphobic,

ableist, really like,
every kind of prejudice

that you can have.

So as a result,
you're not seeing communities

that have been
historically oppressed

represented in most archives.

Community archives do this
tremendously valuable service

of starting those
grassroots archives.

They're generally much
smaller and more agile.

They create a nucleus
that we hope will grow

and will last
and preserve materials

that need to be preserved.

I've been going back to those
old newspaper databases

now available at home
and downloading material

that relates to our lives,
those little flashes or glimpses

that try to tell you what it was
like in 1940 or 1910 in BC.

Here is a man from
New Westminster, 22 years old,

charged with a gross indecency
and sentenced to two years

of hard labour
and five strokes of the lash.

That was 1946.

The thing that scars
and defines, in some odd way,

my generation
and previous generations

is that I was a criminal
until I was almost 30 years old.

I could have been arrested
at any moment had it become

a public knowledge
that I was a gay person.

The justice system
viewed you as a criminal.

The religious industry regarded
you as, at best, a sinner,

and more likely evil.

And the psychological industry

regarded you as being
damaged or mentally ill.

The other estate,
which is the press,

not only went along with it,
but they became the agent

by which those
three oppressed you.

Or they disappeared you
so that you didn't exist

in the public eye.

And that was as damaging
as anything, not to be seen.

I'm a trans person
with disabilities.

I grew up my whole life
never seeing people like me

in textbooks or in museums

or really in
anything historical,

let alone, you know,
mainstream media.

And it wasn't really until
I started to learn my history

that I actually saw a future
for myself at all.

That-- that's when
my life changed,

is when I realized
that it wasn't that

I was a freak that should die,
but that I was a real person

and people like me have
existed for millennia.

Um...

Yeah, I don't know
what else to say.

Over here...

...are clipping files.

Mm-hmm.

This file goes back to 1924.

There are articles that would
appear in the newspaper

about somebody who got
arrested for cross-dressing.

The articles
in that period of time

always talked about them
as some kind of

depraved human being.

And yet, somebody who was
so isolated to think that

they were the only person
like them in the world

would see an article like that
and would save it.

That's how lonely they were,

that something like that
was worth cutting and saving.

Most trans people live the vast
majority of their lives

having very little contact
with other trans people.

Repeatedly, we hear from people
that it's been really moving,

it's been really important
to them to see and touch

these materials,
and through them,

to connect with
their predecessors.

Some people
use the word "ancestors,"

occasionally somebody
will call them trans-cestors.

But to be able to
feel that connection

by putting your hands
on these materials

that were in the hands
of those people as well,

it is moving and it's important.

See this one, I find
actually really interesting

'cause trans people
have always had

obviously a very antagonistic
relationship with the cops.

And you can see here,

it's talking about,
you know, special ID cards.

This is actually, like,
a relatively common practice.

Obviously, there's a lot
of issues with carrying

that kind of ID card,
but it provided people

with safety that they
didn't have otherwise.

Um...

Producer:
What is it like

to see these up close?

Like, emotional.

Like, it feels--

often, I feel that I have
more of, like, a connection,

like a true, like,
spiritual connection

with my trans ancestors
than I do with, like,

my actual biological ancestors.

Like, I don't think
I would feel the same way

looking at, like,
my own family papers.

Aaron and the trans archives
is actually, like,

why I went to
grad school at all.

I was looking basically
at what careers

are even available to us.

And I mean, obviously,
things have changed

in the seven years
since I came out,

but even seven years ago,
it was pretty daunting to try

and find any kind of field
that wasn't, like,

actively hostile
to trans people.

Um...

And so when I was, you know,
really trying to find anything,

trying to find, you know,
any kind of information on,

you know, what trans people
were doing, what kind of fields

they were working in and stuff,
that's how I found out about,

you know,
the trans archives and Aaron.

You know, I knew I needed to
learn some kind of new skill,

and the fact that this place
existed where, you know,

our history was actually
prioritized, really,

was one of the impetuses
for me to go to grad school

and study to be an archivist.

So, being here was
obviously really emotional,

meeting Aaron,
who has been a hero of mine,

was really emotional
because it's kind of like

I've sort of finally come
full circle from being just like

this kid in Toronto with, like,
I don't know, nothing, I guess.

Dr. Devor:
Community archives

are inherently unstable

'cause they're volunteer run
and they don't have the funding.

The transgender archives

is part of the University
of Victoria libraries.

University of Victoria
is an institution.

We have all the resources
the University of Victoria

is supporting us
and that's considerable.

We try to have
one foot in each world.

Many of the people
that donated collections here

kept things that were lifelines
for them at the time.

People were concerned that
after their death, someone else

would come in, see what they
had, and they would think,

"Well, nobody would care
about this junk.

This is garbage,"
and throw it away.

And in fact, that did happen.

And so people started to
put their collections here

because they felt like
this is a safe place.

This place will be here
50 years from now,

100 years from now.

Community archives,
there are some

who have lasted
quite a few years.

You know, I hope that they
continue to last a long time.

But there have been many over
the years that have folded.

And there are those that exist,
but every year it's,

we're not sure if we'll be
able to continue to exist.

And so the collections
are precarious.

What's going to happen
to those collections?

Dr. Bains:
For a South Asian Canadian

who is an immigrant
to this country,

a fairly young immigrant
to this country,

I never really understood
what an archive was

until I started
looking at the history

of South Asian Canadians in
Canada, and especially in BC.

I started to find, you know,
large gaps in our history,

whether it was through
designed erasure,

or through omission,
or just through neglect.

I found that there was
large pieces of our history

that were either not included
or had just been forgotten.

We were everywhere in BC.
We were in small towns.

We were in big cities.
We were in institutions.

We were working.
We had children.

We went to hospitals.
But we were seen nowhere.

But I'm an optimist,
so I don't sit and wait

for someone else
to do this work.

You know, we just start.

My name is Satwinder Bains,

and I'm the director of the
South Asian Studies Institute

at the University of
the Fraser Valley,

and I manage the South Asian
Canadian Legacy Project.

I've been in Canada since 1975,

and I've been through many
iterations of my own identity.

I came from India and I actually
had rose-coloured glasses on,

and I thought Canada was ready

for this young, Brown,
idealistic young person,

and Canada was a country
of information,

and everybody was waiting
with open arms at the airport.

It was a rude awakening that
that was not the case.

I wanted society to see me
as a holistic human,

as a person with gifts,
as a person with values.

And I got pegged into
a little square.

I was seen as either
a Hindu or an East Indian,

terms I wasn't accustomed to.

My terms were also racial slurs
that were thrown at me.

So I inured myself
from some of that racism

that I faced as a young girl.

I had to find, inside me,
a deep well of love, self-love,

so that the racism
that I felt wouldn't affect me

to the point
that I would harm myself.

So finding your role
in society takes time.

To become
a South Asian-Canadian,

where I believe my identity
is important as a South Asian,

but I'm as Canadian
as anybody else.

But my South Asian-ness
also informs who I am.

And it is a beautiful
information that I carry with me

that I don't want to give up.

We are over a hundred years
in this country,

but it's a moment right now
where people are reflecting back

and saying,
wow, that was important.

Not just the Komagata Maru,
not just the big events,

but the daily occurrences
are important.

Opposition as minorities,

opposition
as marginalized people,

opposition as settlers,

displacing
First Nations peoples as well.

And this is all very new.

I felt that the South
Asian-Canadian Project

would be that vehicle
that would allow me

to record something.

Prior to this,
it was an isolatory work.

I was doing it by myself.

But to include more people,
to put the message out

to the community
that we're coming.

You know, we want to listen
to your stories.

That legacy part
is really critical.

And unfortunately, for us,

we haven't had that legacy
for a long time.

That's amazing
that she has old names.

Magnus:
Yeah.

When we don't
collect these things,

when we don't make these
records accessible,

it doesn't get
included in history.

I worked for two LGBT community
archives before coming to SASI,

and that's really what
fueled my passion,

but also my ethic
when it comes to archives.

And so I was really excited
to work on

the South Asian-Canadian
digital archive

because it was
an opportunity for me

to do the kind of work
that I entered the field to do,

which was to make sure that
marginalized people's histories

aren't, you know, erased.

Dr. Bains:
Simple lifetime stories

of our everyday existence
proved to us as Canadians

that we built
this country as well.

Even as settlers, we came in,
we lived in small communities,

and we built homes,
and we belonged.

Those simple, everyday, normal
stories are not afforded to us.

Any photographs you see are
caught through a lens of very

industrious people working at
the mill or working somewhere.

We are already 50 years behind.

Kathryn:
Mayo Singh, and I believe,

it was 35 shareholders
bought this land in Paldi

on Vancouver Island
and established Mayo Siding,

which was a mill, and it was
very, very successful.

But what made Paldi different

was that Mayo Singh
was South Asian.

Many, many of the workers that
were originally drawn to Paldi

were also South Asian
because at that time,

it was impossible
or almost impossible

for them to work anywhere else.

But then other communities
were drawn as well.

Megnus: It was
an intercultural community.

You had a lot of South Asian
immigrants who moved there

to work for Mayo,
and a large population of

Chinese-Canadian immigrants and
Japanese-Canadian immigrants,

and then, you know,

white European-Canadian
immigrants as well,

all living and working
and growing up together

in this town.

And if you look at, especially
like the school photos,

that's very, very evident.

There are other camps
with multicultural enclaves,

but there was
something special about Paldi

that I haven't heard
anywhere else.

And it was just this spirit of
love that existed always there.

Paldi is a very,
very unique community.

I personally don't know
of anything comparable

or any town comparable
in the country.

When we set out, I really,
really wanted to make sure

that we had some kind of
documentation of Paldi,

but I didn't know
if anything existed.

The Cowichan Valley
Museum and Archives

did have the Joan Mayo fawn,
the Mayo Singh family fawn.

That fawn is,
for the most part,

all of the research material
that Joan Mayo gathered.

So some of the records
in there are her own,

but then there's also a lot of
collected material from,

you know, community members
or people in Paldi that,

you know, gave her photos
or she took a photo of a photo.

So I drove out to
Vancouver Island,

I picked up the boxes,
and yeah, we've been digitizing

and we're just
finishing up processing

and description right now.

Dr. Bains:
Joan was both a historian

and a collector.

She married into
a South Asian-Canadian family

and then she adopted
that family as her own.

She was accepted
by the community,

but there was a time, I'm sure,
she must have felt like

she was just looking inwards
from outside.

You know, it's one thing
to take the photograph,

but then to have a system
where they're collecting it,

which I would love
for Joan to tell us,

you know, why she did that.

My name is Joan Mayo,
and I married the oldest son

of Mayo Singh in 1953.

No, sorry, 1951.

Producer:
What does it mean to you

to know that the South Asian
Legacy Project is digitizing

all of the photos
and the videos?

I just think
it's a wonderful thing.

And it just shows how close
we all were, still are.

Even though most of them moved
away since the mill closed,

we're still all very close.

It's like family.
It's one big family.

Dr. Bains:
That type of archive

is missing for us.

We don't have
a complete history of a town.

We have snippets.

And while people are
trying to stitch it together,

you know, the evidence
is missing.

I know that the archive
is just being digitized,

but I think beyond
the digitization,

is the storytelling.

We are lucky that
we can take Paldi,

one small geographic city

in the big province
of British Columbia,

and say, within that city,
is the lived experiences

of South Asian-Canadians
that you can tease apart

at so many levels,
and find beneath it,

all kinds of community living.

That, to me,
is the beauty of Paldi.

The gift of Paldi,
the gift of the person

who collected those
photographs, who kept them,

who put behind them the dates
and the names of the people.

To us, that gift is-- it's--
you cannot put a value to it.

♪ Take three,
take off, and take me ♪

♪ To a place, to the people
across the sea ♪

Dr. Bains:
While Paldi's history

is really known for the male,

the archive tells
a different story.

The archive tells a story of
men and women involved in play,

and labour, and home,
and tradition,

and events, and marriages,
and births, and deaths.

How school kids
went together and the mums

got to talk to each other
and learn each other's food.

And there was conversation
going on even if they didn't

understand each other.

And it became this microcosm
of Canadian society.

♪ So let's go,
let's go, let's go ♪

♪ Let's go home ♪

♪ Home is where we's be ♪

♪ Home is where you are ♪

♪ Home is where I belong ♪

♪ Home is what we make ♪

♪ Home is in your heart ♪

♪ Home is where,
home is where we's be ♪

♪ Home is where you are ♪

♪ Home is what we make ♪

♪ Home is in your heart ♪

♪ Home is where I belong ♪

We came from India
in June of 1967.

I was born in Paldi in India.
Arrived in Paldi Airport here.

From Paldi to Paldi.

We lived here from 1950
to just before 1970.

I was born here in Paldi.

Born and raised in Paldi.

I was wonderful.

Unforgettable.

All the kids were
together all day long.

We hung out as much as we
could from morning till dark.

We had a nice little group hall,
and we had community activities.

We were young.

Everybody knew everybody.

We didn't feel like we came
from India and were new here.

It was just like we were
part of one big family.

A lot of us are still very,
very close, very good friends.

We played together,
worked together,

cried together,
laughed together.

This was our playground.

This is the temple
that I got married in.

East Indian, Japanese, Chinese,
Ukrainian, Scottish, English.

We thought this is
how the world is.

Nobody's ever forgotten,
I don't think,

what they experienced here.

Everybody wants that remembered.

So our children can see
it, and our grandchildren

can see it, and
their grandchildren.

I'd like people to realize that
this little town was a legacy,

and that everybody should
get a chance, like we did,

to grow up in a place like this.

♪ Home is where I belong ♪

♪ Home is you, my friend ♪

♪ Home is in the song you
listening to, home ♪

So this one's really full.

Oh...

We have so many.

...beautiful.

I love this one,

but unfortunately, we
have no idea who any

of these people are.

The men are.

Yeah.

These men look like

they're, you know, new
immigrants to the country.

Yeah. Yeah.

They're turbans, and it

looks like after the
war, because one of them

is wearing a uniform.

This is amazing.

Yeah, I love that one.

I think these are the only
photos we have of these kids.

Oh, my goodness, this
is Mahinder Doman.

Mahinder is quite famous now
as a writer and an author.

"Playing in the
backyard under the..."

-"Washing."
- Washing.

Uh-huh.

Yeah. I like that
one a lot, too.

Well, you know what, Magnus?

There are very rare photographs
of men holding their babies.

Mm-hmm. Usually
it's the women that

are holding the babies, but
for women to be given

centre stage
and he's in the back.

Mm-hmm.

- That's beautiful.
- Yeah.

Beautiful.

And then this is
a birthday party,

and that's Rajindi
right there.

Oh, you can see that
with the other lens.

I know. It's so easy
to identify him.

Like, there's him again.

It's so obvious.

Look at that.

Yeah. I also, like,
I want to put that one

in the carousel, too.

It's such a great photo.

It's so BC, too, right?

So BC with the logging.

- And the log is so large.
- Yeah.

It's half of him.

Mm-hmm.

It's both emotional

and just a gift.

The overwhelming sense that
this is a gift from the past.

This sense of discovery.

And I get emotional about it
because we have so little.

It's all in our memories,
it's gone with our

pioneers and our elders.

Those stories are gone,
those images are gone.

But for someone to have
saved all this and

then many years later,
let's say 70 years later,

we're opening a file and
we see these photographs.

We can say, "This happened.

There was a house and
people did live here.

And this is what they did
and here's the evidence."

You can keep talking about
it, but until you see

something, ha.

It's overwhelming.

Victorious, you know they like
travel to get the photos."

The worst thing we can do
is for our generations not

to know where we've been.

You know, it's interesting
when you don't see your

heritage reflected in
either the curriculum

or in community stories
or in monuments or

history as it is told.

You realize that your
heritage and what you're

leaving behind hasn't been
important to someone.

How did that happen?

How come we were absent?

I really want to
question authorities and

people in power to say,
"What gave you that kind

of immunity to erase us?"

Film Narrator: British Colombia,
the most lovely country

that gined.

I am third-generation Canadian.

I am tied to Vancouver
Island because my father

was born in Cumberland.

My grandfather, Lim Lip Poon,
he was a head taxpayer

and he came in 1890.

When I teach, I talk about
my name and how people make

judgments by how they know you.

So if I say Imogene Lim,
they're more likely to think,

"Ah, maybe born in Canada."

But if I said my
Chinese name, Lum Mo Jun,

they would immediately
say I'm a foreigner.

And that's part of
the larger issue

about being Asian in Canada,
that being constantly identified

as being a perpetual foreigner.

Person:
Five, two, three, four!

A shocking new survey
shows just how prominent

anti-Asian racism
is in our country.

One of the most
difficult things for me,

in a place like Canada, is
that exclusion was successful.

And people seem to be
unwelcome latecomers.

But that's an acceptance of my
story, the success of exclusion.

It's because of you
Chinese people.

Says the unidentified
woman in this video.

That normal Canada, the
Canada that they are

disturbing, is a white Canada.

Get out of my face!
I'm Canadian!

Scapegoating Asians, blaming
Asians, that has had a long

enduring life in Canada.

For much of the history
of Canada, what went

into an official archive,
was really in the support

of state stories about
Canada being this place

where some people belonged, and
other people didn't belong.

Every record is about
Chinese being a problem

and not belonging.

And we're going to document
that again and again and again.

We had laws on the books
for most of our history

that basically put the
power of the state

behind white supremacy.

One of the most effective ways
of thinking about history

is to think about silences.

What is not collected by those
in power, what is left out,

makes it really difficult to
tell stories because you're

encountering the missing.

On behalf of the people
and government of Canada,

we offer a full apology
to Chinese Canadians

for the head tax and
express our deepest sorrow

for the subsequent exclusion
of Chinese immigrants.

We can't just say,
"Okay, we apologized.

We're all good now."

But still, you don't
show up in the archives.

You can't unmake that.

You can't recover the
past, but you can recover

a connection to the past.

The surveillance of the
Chinese in a really perverse

way created archives.

Archives of exclusion.

So the Chinese who don't
show up in other records,

and yet in police records,
as they are being targeted

for breaking laws that were
only applying to them.

We can actually get a
fairly rich story of what

social life was like.

I get a little secret
joy out of that.

It's sort of like, "Ah, you
thought you were doing this,

but you're not as smart
as you thought you were."

The process of silencing
makes a lot of noise.

Now, once you try to
look for the process of

erasure and silencing,

what you start to see is
traces, the noise everywhere.

Classic painting of the
photograph that everybody sees

of Cumberland's Chinatown.

So this would be the
two main roadways,

and so you've got
the fire hydrant,

and that's always,
people's like,

"Oh! did you see
the fire hydrant?"

So it's a marker point
between the two roads,

the upper road, the lower road.

So think about, you know,
like you're in this place

and they actually had
houses all along here.

And when you look now, all the
water is just right up here.

Chinatowns, they get erased,
they get burned down,

populations move.

Oh, here's my uncle.

So like Nanaimo's, it burned.

Duncan's,
it was redevelopment.

Cumberland also burned.

Part of me is like, wow,
this is really beautiful.

But then you think,
oh, you know,

this is where my, you
know, family came from.

And I'm hearing the
kids in the background.

I'm thinking they could be,
could have been the kids

from my parents' generation,
you know, like people playing

out and the sound of voices.

Because there's, you know,
if it wasn't for that

background of the kids,
it would be silent.

So there's something about
the silence of the trees

and sort of the
majesty of nature.

But this was a
bustling location.

When you're doing this
kind of research,

you're building on
a number of clues.

So you're being the
detective, right?

But there might be
fire insurance maps.

There might be
business directories.

And then you look
at the landscape.

So you see how it's, like, a
little bit raised up there?

So I'm thinking how
they had a garden

sort of up on the hillside.

I'm thinking, you know,
it's like there's

a bit of a plateauing up
there, or a ledge-type piece.

Ethno-botany.

You've got the ethno, which is
looking at the sort of cultural

use in the botany,
which is the plants.

And it's a reminder of who was
located here earlier,

that their presence is no
longer present, so they've

been erased except for
the plants that remain.

With the Chinese community,
lots of times you see bamboo to

remind people of the homeland.

If you look at this,
we're not talking like

just planted bamboo.

This bamboo has been
around for some time.

And my suspicion, without
going through land titles

to look at the record, is
that somebody of

Chinese ancestry
probably lived here.

For me, bamboo and watercress,
because of the sort of poking

around that I've done
here, is like,

"Oh, that's something
to look for."

My friend who lives
in Departure Bay,

she said, "You know,
like once a year,

you know, this family comes,
they fill a garbage bag of

whatever's in the ditch,
and then they're gone."

But she says they
do it every year,

so I go look in the ditch.

It's watercress.

Departure Bay was a
area that had farming.

So even if there were not
land owned by Chinese,

they would have been labour.

When you have just the tops, you
could just do a quick stir fry

with garlic, very good.

Just with a...

Then season it with a little soy
and sesame oil, it's perfect.

The Chinese presence
is found throughout BC

and basically across Canada.

You can smell the
mustiness of this.

So this says, "Place names
of British Columbia."

So when you start
looking at this list...

...it has names that might
be recognizable to you,

but then there are
those small places,

and you say,
"Why is that important?"

You know, like,
"Why is it in this book?"

They have things like "Athrim"

It's like, "I'm not even sure
where Athrim is," right?

There are other places
that clearly were

significant enough to be
in this book and as a

reminder the book was printed
in 1897 printed in Vancouver.

The fact that you have
these places that were

identified in this
book is telling.

Those places are not
what people think of and

say they were Chinese
or Chinatown there.

This is all about
that erasure of

the significance of those
small town places.

For some people, they
think there's that

dichotomy, indigenous people,
first peoples, and then

European settlers.

And they don't
think of the non-European

settlers that were
here early on as well.

If you avoid the evidence

that's right there, you get
to say, nobody else was here.

Yes, indigenous peoples
were here and then it was

us and there was no
one else in between.

Yu: If you want to say something
is important in the past, then

you will make your own archive.

You need your own archive.

objects and things
that are significant.

Even if they are ephemeral
or lost in time,

you can recover them by giving
them meaning in the present.

Grace Wong: As people come in,
the first thing they'll see

is actually this dragon head,
which we think was

used as early as 1930.

Behind that dragon head
would be a very long fabric

where people underneath
it would be dancing.

Right at the very beginning,
people would ask,

"Oh, so why does it have to
be a Chinese Canadian museum?

Whatever you want to
do, why can't it be

a part of something else?"

And I guess I would say
that, first of all,

if people had recognized
that it was important,

you know, other places, other
institutions, other whatever,

I think it would have been done.

Having a dedicated institution
means that those stories

are being told from the
community's voice, from

the people's voices, not
interpreted via several other

layers, that there's a real
resonance to the community.

Countering racism,
anti-Asian racism,

needs to start with
broad education,

which is very much
a role of museums.

The Chinese Canadian
Museum specifically

related to Chinese Canadian
history,

but the museum is not just
for Chinese Canadians.

It needs to be a
museum for everyone.

Do we have this at home?

Yu: The past is
not a closed book.

It's almost truism that each
generation makes their own past.

I find.

Yu: But we determine the meaning
of the past right now.

Those who are leaving things
in archives are those who have

an eye to how they will be
understood when people in

the future look back
upon them.

...passage.

What does this say?

This says
Chinese Public School.

Yu: So to me that's what's
so interesting about

archives, that's what's
so interesting about

history because it's always
about the future in my mind.

It's about what we
project forward as how

we want to be remembered.

And what does this one say?

This says Chinese
Benevolent Association.

What does this mean?

It means Chinese people come
together and they work together.

It's a group of Chinese
people that worked together.

And so let's remake the
meaning of the past to fit

the future we want now.

This vault's about
11,000 square feet.

This quadrant is a mix of
various kinds of special media,

including a lot of our
photographic prints,

a lot of oversized prints.

We're the final home
for any records

of permanent value
from the city,

but we complement those
records with records from

organizations and individuals,
from families, and from

collectors like Ron.

Can you walk us through
what it was like to decide

to put your archive in a
government institution?

It was a wrenching, to
be honest with you.

I have been thumping
this tub for 30 years,

so there's a lot of people
in the community who must be

wondering what Ron
is thinking.

And that tub was this.

These are our stories.

We have to control
the narrative.

We have to be the ones who
decide what our lives mean.

Man: Looking through a series of
old pics of drag queens,

the city hoped to help identify
some of the many unknown faces

in a new gay and lesbian
archive they've established.

Our history as a community,
as a minority community,

has been heavily
under-documented by historians.

Ron was quite famous in
the community because

of his collection.

He was the person we
would send researchers to

if they had any questions
about the gay and lesbian

community in Vancouver.

We didn't have a lot of the
LGBTQ2+ community documented.

Nothing is substantial or
as far-ranging, as broad,

as the BCGLA collection.

So this is a lot of RON stuff
of the BCGLA collection.

So all of this bay, that bay,
some other bays, and this,

I believe, is mostly his
subject files series.

Any subject under the sign,
Ron will have a file for it.

As Ron got older, he started
seriously thinking about

where the collection could go.

I had to give it up because
I'm desperately elderly,

and I needed to begin to
look further afield.

The gay and lesbian community
had lots of reasons

to not trust the city.

So we were really honored
when Ron approached

us as a potential home.

I'll take that one.

I shut down the main archive
on December 31st, 2017, and we

arranged a day, and within a
matter of two or three hours,

they stripped my apartment.

Complete, and it just all went
out the door, and van load

after van load, because
it was so huge.

I'd gotten so used to it
that I'd forgotten how

very large it really was.

Within a year of it being
moved over there, suddenly

a huge quantity of it was
appearing on the internet.

Something I could
never have done.

I'm eternally grateful
to them.

They are my friends.

They are friends
of our community.

My own thoughts about
this process of archiving

were that while the
politics was important

and the changes of
law were important

and the changes in the
social fabric mattered,

there was a larger story
there, which is about people

and how they live, how
they struggle through

their daily lives, how
they managed in times

that were much more
toxic than the world we

were in at that point.

And it hadn't ground them up.

I wanted to tell their story.

I wanted their struggle
to be heard and

understood and honoured.

That became the real mission, to
honour the voices that weren't

going to be heard otherwise.

The people in this building in
the provincial archives have

the power of life and death
over events in BC history.

Because it's in this
building where books

and documents,
originals are kept.

There's no other
documents like them.

If they disappear, events
in BC history disappear.

When I was a kid, there
was a little local museum

in my neighbourhood.

And there was a letter framed
on the wall that was written

by my great-grandmother,
and she had won a prize,

a national award, for
writing this letter.

To see it on the wall felt like
there was a real connection

for me to that place
and to this person

who had lived
100 years before me.

It sparked this love of
history and curiosity

about the place where my family
had lived for generations.

I am incredibly privileged.

I come from a white
settler family

that moved to Vancouver Island
on that side of

my family many generations ago
and lived on stolen indigenous

land and yet I got to see
myself represented in

this space and so many
other people don't see

themselves represented.

The Royal BC Museum is
pledging a major change after

the release of a report
today that found racism and

discrimination was directed at
staff inside the organization.

The board of the museum has
met with the CEO and they've

come to agreement that Jack
will depart later this month.

Racism and discrimination
was found within the museum,

including a culture of fear
and distrust in the workplace.

Management failed to properly
handle those complaints

and a recognition the
museum has outdated an

offensive exhibit stemming
from its 135 year history,

telling BC's history through the
lens of European colonizers.

These two reports show that
we are not the museum we

wanted to be, and we're not
the museum we should be.

I think everybody internally
realizes that there needs

to be massive changes.

Things don't move quickly...
but I think they need to.

I think we hit the
perfect storm.

The perfect storm of wanting
so much to do repatriation,

community relationships,
changing the way we do,

except all these really
positive, wonderful goals,

but not actually having
the structure to do it.

It's very obvious to me that
what we have is an organization

that was structured
in colonial times,

and we see not just remnants
of it, we see evidence of it.

We take it for granted.

It's taken for granted
by a lot of people

that these structures will just
somehow work themselves out.

They don't just work
themselves out.

You have to actually
look at the policies,

find out what is
discriminatory in them,

because many of them don't
mean to be discriminatory,

but they are.

And they need to be very
carefully focused on

and consult with communities
and change the way those

policies are written.

We have the ethical
responsibility

to really understand
how profound

the changes need to happen.

It's not just about
adding things.

It's not just about tweaking
a couple of things.

It's about real fundamental
understanding of how to rebuild

something with a completely
different framework.

I believe that all institutions,
especially those who have

recognized that they are
colonial institutions,

need to be on the way
for a revolution.

How is it you are not
accountable to

Canadian society,
to British Columbia?

You know, where is the
immunity in saying,

"This is how BC was built,"
without understanding that

so many of the groups of
men and women gave their

lives to this country,
fought in wars

for this country,

died on... building
railway tracks and log booms,

and yet they're absent.

Absence was a very difficult
thing to get around in my mind,

and I think absence has been
the thing that motivates me.

I'm not angry,
I'm just frustrated.

We did an intervention
at the Royal BC Museum,

and I remember walking through,
and we were given sticky notes

and pieces of paper
where we could intervene

in terms of the
historical trajectory

of how they had shown
British Columbia, and to say,

"We were here, we were here,
and we were also here,

but we're not
reflected."

It's almost like our presence
was nowhere to be seen.

I'm so proud of
that intervention,

because previously
I'd never really imagined

that my history could
be present here.

I kind of assumed that
the dominant narrative

was going to take over
and I had to be relegated

to the margins
again,

and didn't really
question that positioning.

But the intervention really
allowed me to understand

that I have a claim,
and I can make that claim.

Yeah, that was
so important

that people actually feel
rightfully there, right?

Like, they need to feel that's
their space and we need to do

so much more work to
make that moment last longer

and do more things
for the communities.

Yeah, we'd like
some permanency.

You know, we don't want
to be temporary Canadians.

We want to be
permanent Canadians.

We want to have that
sense of permanency

so that we're not asking
for this over and over again.

I'm hoping this will
transform this space.

Tzu-I: There has been
a lot of different efforts

to add bits and pieces of
previously marginalized stories,

or previously
erased stories.

What we actually
need to do is to...

ditch that binary model and
really build a relationship

to invite the communities in,
consult and work with people

who have different
needs to share

and build that common
vision for the future.

Victoria's Chinatown is
a very important historic site

that is
at risk.

A lot of different businesses,
communities, and residents

are losing their footing in that
space because of all the issues

with modern Chinatowns
across the Americas:

the gentrification,
the urban development,

and economic
shifts.

When the Victoria Chinatown
communities wanted something

done in their space, we wanted
to really work with them

and see what
their needs were.

Alan: We wanna show a new
image of Victoria Chinatown,

which is, you know,
the past and the present.

Tzu-I: We want to
blend the historical

with the
modern design.

The exhibit is called
Peering into the Past

because we want to create those
innovative small corners.

Alan: And this is the first
project in collaboration

with the Royal BC Museum
as well as Salient Group

and the Victoria Chinatown
Museum Society.

And it's a
storefront exhibit

which was curated by
the Royal BC Museum.

So, our next venture will
actually be an interim museum

where we could
actually open the door

and people could go in
and see exhibits.

It would be really
good for us.

South Asian Canadian Museum
is just starting out.

I would love to sit with you
and the Vancouver people

and just
shoot the breeze.

Let's talk
to each other

and maybe build each other
through solidarity.

I think institutions can help us
develop some sort of ideas

that bring us all together,
and I never thought of that

until now, that perhaps we need
to talk more to each other

around one table,
because up to this point

there's been both a provincial,
federal, Canadian kind of view

about keeping
people separate.

I would like to see more
solidarity from all kinds

of community groups
to come together to say,

"Our voices are greater
if we are united."

I think let's record this
as well, let's put this...

There is a systemic and
system-wide failure, I believe,

in Canada,
to really be inclusive.

The status quo
is very entrenched

and embedded in
our communities.

It has at its core
a very supremacist idea.

It has at its core a place
of privilege and power

that is
unquestioned.

The status quo thinks that
it has also clawed its way

to its position
and it's gonna hang on.

We're not a society
that's immune

from these kind of thoughts
or intentional ideas,

and to pretend that we are
is disingenuous.

Through colonization,
the priority for history

has been a European-centric
history.

We don't question why
mainstream institutions

don't reflect
our presence.

And when you make them
uncomfortable,

when you do
question them,

there's a lot of
defensiveness.

Let's be honest, people don't
like to shift and make change.

So, the more open
we can be to the questions

that are posed to us, the better
we will be as a society.

The status quo
needs to shift

because the status quo
is rotten.

Female Reporter: Most Canadians
know Sir John A. Macdonald

as the country's
first Prime Minister.

His government created the
Indian Act and established

the residential school system,
where thousands were abused

and generations
of trauma followed.

In order to really
commit to reconciliation,

we need to remove the statue
of John A. Macdonald

from the front steps
of City Hall.

Sandra: History, to me,
means a connection to the past.

As a people, we always
love telling stories.

We're very much
storytellers.

That's just kind of how
we share some of the history

and some of the
knowledge that we have.

I was fortunate enough
to have that connection

in a living form
of my grandmother,

but not
everybody does.

And so, sometimes knowing one's
history is extremely difficult.

I kind of wanted to get back
involved with my nation

and facilitate that
connection.

My name is Sandra Marion
and I'm the Director of Culture

and Heritage for
Tahltan Central Government.

Chad: Tahltan Nation is
a strong Indigenous people

up in northwest
British Columbia.

We have about 4,000 members
that we know of.

Close to 90% of our people
now live outside the territory,

and it's really
important to ensure

that our cultural information
is accessible to them.

There's a huge connection
between archives and land.

The archives tells the stories
about our ancestors on the land;

their use and
how they survived.

A huge part of our culture
was survival.

We have so many different
ecosystems within our territory

that each area had their
own way of doing things

depending on the terrain
and the weather.

And those stories
that are recorded,

they're important
so that we understand

how to use the land
in different areas.

So, those stories
need to be kept.

Need to be kept safe
and preserved.

Tahltan Central Government
started in 1974.

Early on, we had started the
Culture and Heritage Department.

And one of the major tasks was
to start building an archive

so that we could
house that all in one place.

Sandra:
A lot of documentation,

especially around
exploration in our territory,

has accumulated
over the years.

But nobody else
outside the organization

could access
those documents.

And we get all kinds
of documents.

So, these books,

they're about different
areas in the territory.

And so this was one of their
resource books from 1982.

There's a picture of
Treaty Creek.

This is a book the TTC had
obtained to use in their study

for interviews
about land claims.

There's a lot
of audio.

Over time, there were
multiple interviews

conducted with
our elders.

During the fires of 2018,
everybody realized,

you know, these
documents are precious,

so we wanted to
organize and preserve

to help support
Tahltan identity

and kind of
reinvigorate it.

We're taking resources and we're
putting it back into the people

in the form of
culture and language.

So, we
typically get

a lot of different
forms of media in here.

We get cassette tapes,
with or without cases.

Recently, one of our members,
she had found some footage

in her uncle's basement and
brought it to me and said,

"Hey, I would like
to donate this."

And this is where-- we have VHS,
we have mini digital videos.

We didn't have time to go
through it properly right away.

And probably three
or four weeks ago,

our multimedia director sent me
a clip, and it was 27 minutes

of my grandmother
working on moose hide.

We've never videotaped her
as a family,

and she passed in
April 2020.

And so to have her working
on moose hide is incredible.

Scrape
with blade.

is what you call it.

Sandra:
It was just...

I was
blown away.

The VHS actually
has no title on it,

so nobody knew
what was on there

until we digitized it
and pulled it up.

I was actually having
a pretty rough morning,

and so when I seen that,
I was like,

"Okay, Grandma,
message received."

This is what we're
trying to recreate

for our membership,
is these moments.

If there's
information out there

about your nation,
about your family,

anything to do
with your identity

as an Indigenous individual,
you are supposed to

have unaltered access
to that information.

And you're supposed to
be able to bring it home.

Ursula: And with respect to
what we want from the RBCM

and BC Archives, we need to go
through formal channels.

Those formal channels
haven't caught up

with existing legislation
or changes to legislation

that have happened in the
past couple of years.

Part of the materials
at that institute

are First Nations cultural
heritage and property.

Genevieve: One of the
biggest concerns about working

in this field today
is recognizing

that the work that we do
causes real harm,

and trying to find
a way to mitigate that

and to
fix that.

To ensure that not only do we
not make those mistakes

going forward, but to
try and actually repair

what was done
in the past.

I think it must just be
down a couple bays.

We're not anywhere
near there yet.

And a big part of it is
engagement with communities

that have the knowledge,
never assuming that we know

what's best or
what the answer is.

So, this is the
AJ Stone album.

Sandra:
So, this is from 1890...

Genevieve:
1897.

Sandra: Yeah.
To '98.

Genevieve:
To '98.

Like,
the near Spatsizi.

And so this is, like,
a really perfect item

of what we would like
to discuss of, you know,

bringing it home, given the
individuals in these photos

and being able, like you said,
to have the physical copy

and then discussing
how to preserve it,

because it is
from 1897.

Genevieve:
Right.

Sandra: But then
allowing our own people

to look at them
and say,

"Hey, that's my family member.
That's who that is."

Genevieve:
Yeah.

Sandra: And properly
putting names to photographs

that have
been unnamed...

for over a century.

Genevieve:
Exactly. Yeah.

Sandra:
These photos are all online,

and our people have said, "You
know, that's my family member.

I'm a descendant of
that person in that photo."

But then you look
in this album

and it's all numbers,
and it's...

There's a level of, like,
a feeling of dehumanizing...

Genevieve:
Absolutely.

Sandra:
...the photos.

Because we have had
access to them,

but to properly
label them...

Genevieve:
Yeah.

Sandra: ...and bring them
home would be... amazing.

Genevieve:
Yeah.

Ursula:
Mm.

Sandra: This is Tahltan
before the bridge.

There's markings
in the...

the cliffs.

Ursula:
Look at the hide.

She's right
on it.

Sandra: Yeah, remember in
the video with my grandma,

she put that bar out
in the blankets

and climbed right up
on it to...

Woman:
Wow.

Sandra:
...to, like, scrape it.

She's scraping it.

Genevieve: And this is
raised up above the ground?

Sandra:
Yeah.

Genevieve:
Wow.

Ursula:
It's incredible.

Sandra:
It looks so cold.

Ursula:
Yeah.

Sandra: The amount
of stories that would

come out of these photos from
our people would be amazing.

Genevieve:
Mm-hmm.

So, when we've been in
conversation about, uh,

repatriating material
from the archive,

our conversations
have landed on

the shared
stewardship model.

So, we haven't actually
repatriated the items,

but this is new
water for us.

This is something
that we haven't done.

This is-- we're
testing the waters,

but something
we'd be eager to

enter into conversation
with you about.

Sandra: So, for the
Tahltan-specific archive,

it'll be a huge asset
in the sense of,

you can come home and you can
physically look at these photos

that involve your family
and your territory.

We talk about incentivizing
our members to wanna come home.

Having things like this
would be huge,

'cause then they can
come home and they can

look at their history and they
can physically touch

tangible items of
their own history.

And I think there's
an underestimation

in the power
of that.

Whereas now we have to
come to Victoria,

and so being able
to do that

while on your own
territory, it's huge.

Love the accent of
the blue in the middle.

Ursula:
Yeah, me too.

Sandra:
It's so gorgeous.

They belong
at home.

They belong at home,
and our...

our people need to see them
and they need to...

work to...
remember.

And it's just seeing
pieces like this

to connect to those pieces
of today and to know that,

even though this is here,
it wasn't lost.

This artifact should
come home, though.

This item from home
should come home.

Male Reporter: Photographs of
men and women whhelped...

Dan: An institutional archive
is governed by a lot of

different protocols that come
from a top-down view

of narratives that come from
older European traditions,

they come from
colonial traditions.

And not to say that
all community archives

don't do that.

Collecting objects is,
by nature,

a fairly colonial
thing to do.

But the advantage of
a community archive is,

it really is not beholden
to those, necessarily.

It can be
flexible.

Grunt Gallery is an artist-run
centre in the Canadian model

here in Vancouver, on unceded
Coast Salish Territories.

We have kept an archive
of the programming history

of this space in one form or
another since the beginning.

See, we don't keep artworks
as in the physical work here.

A lot of times
we're talking about

photo and video
documentation.

Ursula:
Hello.

Dan:
Hi, there. Welcome to Grunt.

My name's Dan,
I'm the archives manager here.

Very nice to meet
both of you.

Glad to
have you here.

Come on in,
take a look.

So, this is the office,
and as well as our archive.

The Grunt's been around
since 1984,

so we have a pretty
extensive archive

of all our programming
over the years,

and exhibitions, performances,
events, publications.

And the video I have
to show to you today,

I can give you
a little background.

There's a Mi'kmaq artist
named Mike McDonald

who passed
in 2006,

but his tapes are held by
an artist-run centre called

Vtape in Toronto.

And so I took copies of them
out here as a sort of backup

and to kind of connect
some of his work

with his space that he
spent a lot of time in.

I'll just bring up
this video for you.

Man:
You remember the first year

you come in the country,
you know?

What year
was that?

Woman:
1914.

Man:
1914.

Woman:
In the spring and...

April we had to
get a chisel.

Man:
Is that right?

You know,
I was born in 1908.

You were small.

I was small, yeah.

I remember, you know, just
like dream there, you know.

Strange people come in
the country, you know.

You kind of know the difference,
you know, in the people there.

I could remember it
just like dream, you know.

Sandra: He was one of the four
or five men that started TCG;

Tahltan
Central Government.

So, I'm going to ask the hard
question: how do we get a copy?

'Cause I can tell you
right now, there's two

very large families back home
who would love this tape.

Dan:
No doubt, no doubt.

Sandra:
Absolutely love it.

I'm related to Eva
through my grandfather.

Dan:
Oh, wow.

Sandra: She was huge in
re-recording our songs,

keeping the
dancing going.

All the tape we have now
for that time is all audio.

There's no
visual at all.

So, this would be, like,
the cherry on top.

Dan: A missing link, kind of,
for that stuff.

Sandra: Yeah,
'cause I don't think

anybody even knows
this exists.

Dan:
Yeah, I think there's--

I mean, I think that's
a great opportunity.

Like, our approach here
is really just about

caring for artists' work
and stewarding the material.

I'm not really into archival
gatekeeping or any sort of--

where we're, like,
possessing it.

And in this case, it's even
a degree removed from that,

because we're essentially
just holding a copy of it.

Sandra:
Yeah.

Dan: I mean, I would want
to honour the commitments

on Mike's
family's behalf

and Vtape and the
agreements that they've made.

But I think it's
definitely a conversation

with them
out there.

But the way
I see it, there's--

Sandra:
Do you have a direct contact

that you might be able
to introduce us to?

Dan:
Definitely, yeah.

Definitely.

Man:
I met Frank when he was 19.

Sandra: I think it's really hard
to think that we can watch this

and not walk away with a copy
and just hope that we have one.

Dan: Yeah, like, I would feel
comfortable giving you, like,

a copy of this if you
have a drive, or I can--

we transfer it to you
or whatever, like...

Sandra:
We all know that song.

Before COVID,
we had dances,

and they would always sing
this song at a dance.

Ursula:
Does it have a name?

Sandra:
Ye Kade Jani.

Ursula:
Kade Jani.

Man:
Oh, my sweetheart.

Sandra:
Wow.

That's...

Thank you so much.

Dan:
Yeah, for sure.

Sandra:
I always talk about timing

and how timing
affects me in this job,

because it's always--
like, slaps me in the face

when things
like this happen.

Like, you going over there
and doing that work

and then
bringing it back...

Dan:
Mm.

Sandra:
...and then us meeting you,

and just how all
of that lines up.

Like...

Dan:
It's pretty amazing.

Sandra: The things
that have to happen

in order to get to
where you are in this moment.

Dan: We could have
easily missed each other,

but that's not
how it worked out.

Sandra: Or you could have
easily missed the tape...

Dan:
That's true.

Sandra: ...and pick
something else. Like...

Dan:
That's true.

Sandra: There's always
these other forces

in the back
that just...

I don't know.

I believe in it.

So.

Dan:
I believe in it, too.

Sandra: Through this work,
things keep coming to us.

I feel like there's
this gravitational pull

in some sort of--
like the Force.

It's this concept
of ghost dancing,

and that we will start to bring
things back to our people

when our ancestors
start coming back to us.

And so, having
these tapes coming to us

rather than us going
looking for it just signifies,

you know, you're in the right
place at the right time

and you're doing the work
that needs to be done.

Ron: You may not know it,
but the moment you are in

has never
happened before.

It is an incredible,
fertile moment to be alive,

and we need to know
what that feels like.

And you have to
tell us.

There is definitely
an understanding

that we're in a time
of massive change.

The institutional
understanding is catching up

to what people on the ground
have been doing for years.

I feel really fortunate
to be at this time,

but I also find
the task very daunting.

It's only possible if we
actually build a relationship,

build a trust
to figure out

how we can reimagine
our cultural spaces.

Imogene: Why does everybody
have to go to the RBCM?

If you have a
particular special item,

why do you have to
see it there?

So, it should remain
in the community.

Henry: It's a process
that's gonna actually take

active remediation,
because we value inclusion.

We think we should create a
society where people belong.

Magnus: If we aren't actively
collecting and preserving

those records,
they disappear, they're gone.

And because we're only
tackling this now in 2021,

in a lot of cases,
we're too late.

Satwinder: I would say
one word might explain

what I feel at this moment,
is the word is "impatience."

I'm also very positive
and an optimist

about where
we're going.

We've just laid
the foundation.

Lou-Ann: British Columbia
and Canada

are a work in progress,
as far as I'm concerned.

We didn't hit the end
at any point.

I'm not even sure we're
at the middle point yet.

And I think that hearing what
real citizens have to say to us,

and taking that
as our lead,

that's what's going to make
the museum of the future.

That's what's going to change
what these places are all about.

And I think that
all citizens then

are gonna have
an opportunity

to learn the real
histories, all of it.

Not just somebody's
narrow interpretation of it,

but all of it.