Forever Lost: Heritage Beneath the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
April 17, 2010 - 4:36pm
Right now, one of the gravest violations of Aboriginal cultural and property rights in Canadian history is underway. The construction of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) is essentially bulldozing our history. Efforts to recover this rich heritage record have been stifled at every step as the CMHR has constantly under funded and minimized recovery efforts. The Province's heritage monitoring body, the Historic Resources Branch (HRB), has shown no leadership and has allowed the CMHR to carry out this totally inadequate project on its own terms.
Furthermore,
Initial mitigation in 2002 identified several Late Woodland Period First Nations camp or village occupations dating ca. 1000-1400 CE, and recovered an astounding record of 72,000 artifacts from a mere 53 m2, with site total estimates of 1,000,000 artifacts for every 1,000 m2 buried under the Museum. Despite all of this, a miniscule budget was determined and assigned to their contract archaeologist. Less than 2% of the buried area was recovered, leaving over 98% of the rich record to be buried and unavailable for interpretation and appreciation.
There is a Facebook Group with the same name as the title of this thread.
Archaeology at The Forks is still incomplete. (last year)
There are so many things wrong with this fucking museum.
1. David Asper Foundation is ponying up lots of dough for it.
2. David Asper Foundation http://www.asperfoundation.com/site/index.html has a "
Menachem Begin Heritage Foundation" (look under Israel Initiatives in the homepage).
Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin is considered by many to be one of the key individuals who helped bring the state of Israel to reality. In commemoration of the late leader, a museum scale memorial centre is being developed in the City of Jerusalem. The Asper Foundation is supporting the initiative through a significant donation.
3. Menachem Begin tried to commit genocide against the Lebanese in 1982.
4. David Asper is now bulldozing FN cultural artifacts under his museum. He is commiting cultural genocide against FN peoples.
5. The Jewish community of Winnipeg is completely silent on this issue!
6. Yet it's Spirit Elder Ahenakew who is vilified by the Jewish community.
Is there not some governing agency for historical sites? Or laws governing native sites like the U.S. has when anything is unearthed during new construction? Anything that can be taken to a judge for an injunction?
From what I've read, Canada does not have the same kind of protective laws as the US does. Check the Facebook site - it has a number of linked stories with information about this issue.
E. Tamaran your generalizations about Jews and the Jewish community are anti-semitic and inappropriate. Please remove them, and don't make generalizations about Jews again.