Documenting the History Trump Wants to Erase

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Canadian Museum and the Chinatown Storytelling Centre both opened in Vancouver with the goal of documenting and honoring the role of Chinese immigrants in Canadian history. Roughly 13,000 people have visited each museum since their openings, and members of the Chinese Canadian community say the exhibits preserve important stories while acknowledging the harm Chinese Candians have faced.

The forensics-based human rights movement uses forensic science to identify victims of genocide and political violence buried in mass graves, allowing their families to arrange proper burial and bolstering collective history around these events. The strategy has been particularly effective in countries with state-imposed silence around past atrocities, such as Spain, where more than 9,000 bodies have been exhumed since 2000.

Coming to terms with the past requires reexamining the way we represent both history and art. The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA, is on the forefront of correcting the absence of enslaved craftsmen in representations of art. The museum’s exhibit on the architectural work at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home presents a fuller story by illuminating the presence and work of enslaved laborers.

Contextualizing artistic representations creates more complex narratives and offers an opportunity to educate about historical memory. The Atlanta History Center has opened an exhibition that illuminates the absence of people of color in the “Battle of Atlanta” Cyclorama, an artwork that celebrates the 1864 Union victory. The museum presents the work alongside interactive guides and films that explain the erasure of African Americans from the memory of the scene.

Reassessing representations creates an opportunity for educational experiences. Instead of simply removing a problematic diorama depicting members of the Lenape tribe and Dutch colonists, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, NY, converted the piece into a learning experience for visitors. Following pressure from groups like Decolonize this Place, the revised diorama now features panels that illuminate and discuss misrepresentations in the piece.

Soil collection ceremonies offer a meaningful way to help cope with and create institutional memory of racial violence across the United States. The Equal Justice Initiative is working to keep the victims of lynching and racial violence alive in America’s collective memory by promoting a practice common across cultures—the collection of soil. Communities collect soil from sites of racially motivated killings into jars, which are then displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama.

In response to the discovery that Chicago police officer Jon Burge led a "Midnight Crew" torturing mostly Black men to coerce criminal confessions, the city council's agreement to make cash reparations to the victims included a mandated curriculum in public schools to teach high school students the truth of what happened. Critics called the curriculum, "Reparations Won," anti-police propaganda. But a rare and lengthy observation of one class' experience showed its effects on youth. Not only did they learn the history, but they also learned the possibility of change in the face of systemic injustice.

In the past 150 years, Finland has gone from famine-ridden to renowned as one of the world’s strongest democracies with leading global rankings in health, education, and innovation. Culture is key to this transformation. Finns are both self-reliant and highly cooperative with a long history of putting independence, freedom, and opportunity for all people front and center in policymaking.

Local volunteers dubbed “activist archivists” are working to document the lives and contributions of LGBTQ+ people across the state, creating an archive of local LGBTQ+ history in the midst of recent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that makes it difficult — and even illegal — to discuss and teach about LGBTQ+ identities and activism.

Human Development Initiatives trains community members to monitor school infrastructure projects eligible for government education funding and gather information to present to the state board when projects are not completed. As a result of the community tracking efforts, several schools have received significant upgrades.