Canadian Museum for Human Rights

16 Sessions. 5 dynamic days. 1 unforgettable conference.

For the first time ever, the International Network of Museums for Peace (INMP) Conference is coming to North America!

Join us August 12 - 16 for the Peacebuilding Through Truth and Reconciliation conference.

Each day is jam-packed with sessions discussing a variety of topics such as:

- How can museums create space for reconciliation, healing and learning beyond their walls?
- What are the cutting‐edge methods to educate for peace?
- What are innovative ways that youth can help create, curate and engage with content promoting truth, reconciliation and transitional justice?
- How can we invite visitors, colleagues, families and communities to rethink their own beliefs and biases, and encourage reflection on our understanding of truth and storytelling?

This conference will provide an opportunity for knowledge keepers, community leaders, museum workers, artists, activists, and scholars to gather in Winnipeg, on Treaty 1 Territory and the homeland of the Red River Métis, to explore the transformative role museums can play in fostering empathy, decolonization, rematriation/repatriation, promoting human rights and cultivating a culture of peace.

This conference also features the opportunity to hear from one of the most powerful young voices in the global movement for Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Autumn Peltier. This is your chance to experience her message firsthand, to witness the passion, wisdom and unwavering commitment that has made her a voice impossible to ignore.

Click the link for pricing and conference details.
https://humanrights.ca/event/peacebuilding-through-truth-and-reconciliation

On July 11, 1990, a 78-day standoff began between the Kanien'kehá:ka people and the Quebec police, RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces. The standoff, now known as the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance or the Oka Crisis, started when the Town of Oka tried to expand a golf course and build condominiums in lands known as the Pines. For hundreds of years, the Kanien'kehá:ka people have repeatedly fought to have these lands recognized as their ancestral territory.

Indigenous peoples are the original inhabitants the land known as Canada - living here since time immemorial. However, through colonization and forced displacement, Canada has attempted to sever Indigenous peoples’ relationships with the land and traditional ways of knowing and being.

For 78 days, the communities of Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawake were denied their fundamental human rights to have access to food, medicine and free passage. Today, many of the issues at the heart of the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance continue to be largely unresolved. Indigenous peoples throughout Canada continue to assert their rights and protect traditional territories from urban expansion, development, deforestation and more.

In “Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance,” Director Alanis Obomsawin sheds light on those 78 days. Watch the full documentary: https://bit.ly/4viL3L0

36 years after the conflict, Ellen Gabriel continues the fight for the protection of traditional lands. Gabriel is a Kanien'kehá:ka Human rights and Environmental rights advocate, artist and documentarian. In her best-selling book “When the Pine Needles Fall,” Gabriel shares her experiences before and during the siege, her continued work since then and why defending the land is vital to all.

“Fighting to protect our inherent rights to our Homelands, our identity, our cultures and languages isn't only for survival, but a way of life. Defending the land is about protecting the preciousness of life for the future.” - Katsi'tsakwas Ellen Gabriel

Photo supplied by Ellen Gabriel

8372 cups, 8372 lives lost forever.

The Bosnian civil war was one of the worst conflicts to erupt after the breakup of Yugoslavia, resulting in widespread human rights violations and abuse. The most well‐known of these abuses occurred in Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces systematically executed more than 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys.

The Bosniaks thought they would be safe because Srebrenica was in a United Nations protected zone. But the United Nations did not prevent the town's capture or the genocide that followed. In 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found the Srebrenica massacre to be an act of genocide.

From 2006 to 2020, in memory of the those killed in the genocide, artist Aida Šehović set up the public monument ŠTO TE NEMA in different cities around the world. She invited passersby to fill cups with coffee and leave them undrunk. Each small cup, or fildžan, represented one Bosniak killed during the Srebrenica genocide. ŠTO TE NEMA was also featured in the Museum's exhibition, Artivism, from 2021-2022.

In 2024, the United Nations General Assembly recognized July 11 as International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica.

Learn about the Srebrenica Genocide through the perspectives of Kerim Bajramovic and Aida Šehović, both Bosniaks touched by the genocide: https://bit.ly/4pke0VO

ŠTO TE NEMA

Remembering the Srebrenica Genocide | CMHR Kerim Bajramovic and Aida Šehović are both Bosniaks touched by the Srebrenica Genocide in different ways. Their perspectives offer distinct personal lenses through which we can learn about Srebrenica and its legacy.