THE CHALLENGES OF ACCURATE AND ETHICAL INTERPRETATIVE PRACTICE
By Maeghan Jerry, Aurora Cacioppo, Jessica Svenningson, Serena Ypelaar, Julia Zungri
Abstract
Working with the Toronto Ward Museum, students in the graduate-level course “Exhibitions, Interpretation, Communication” at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information developed an online exhibition that dealt with Toronto’s history as a centre for migrants and migration. This paper reflects on the interpretive process and research strategies used by the authors in crafting their interpretations for the exhibition, highlighting three challenges: making the past relevant, working with limited information, and adequately and sensitively representing cultural groups to which the interpreter does not belong. Drawing on five case studies presented at the 2017 iSchool Student Conference, the authors discuss the nature of these challenges and offer their strategies for addressing these issues.
Keywords: Canada, interpretation, immigration, museum practice, material history.
Introduction
The Toronto Ward Museum (TWM) is a museum without walls that focuses on telling the stories of migration in Toronto (Toronto Ward Museum, 2017). Taking its name from St. John’s Ward, a historical district in downtown Toronto where early immigrant communities settled, TWM uses the district as a starting point for visitors to explore the stories of immigrant communities across Toronto, spanning from the 19th century to current day. TWM offers programming online and in person across the Greater Toronto Area that focuses on the lived experiences of individuals as a way of understanding the city and its citizens. The Objects and Migrants project asked Master of Museum Studies students to each produce an interpretation of a historical object related to movement and migration from an archive or special collection at the University of Toronto. The resulting “Object Stories” will be presented as an online exhibition on the TWM’s website. The objects chosen for the project include newspaper articles, postcards, letters, and restaurant menus, presenting diverse avenues into the past. These objects offer a varied range of histories and experiences of migration in or to Canada.
Drawing from their experiences working on the Objects and Migrants project, the authors discuss common challenges they encountered during the interpretation process, including making the past relevant to a contemporary audience, producing accurate interpretations where limited information is available, and representing diverse cultural groups. Each of these challenges is discussed below, along with the authors’ strategies for overcoming them. First, however, the authors will summarize five case studies from this project that were presented at the iSchool Student Conference Canada Now on March 11, 2017.
Edit: Objects one through four can be read about in the original post.
Object Five: Photograph of Japanese Canadians Protesting on Parliament Hill for Redress, 1988.
This photograph, taken on April 14th, 1988, is part of the Yamada-Shirley Collection in the Cheng Yu Tang East Asian Library at the University of Toronto. It shows Japanese-Canadian internment camp survivors and their families protesting on Parliament Hill, fighting for redress from the Canadian government to acknowledge the hardships Japanese-Canadians suffered during World War II. The photograph of a man holding a sign that states, “Canadians took these boats from Canadians and never paid for them!” is referring to the 1,500 stolen fishing boats that were taken from Japanese-Canadians before they were relocated to the mountains of British Columbia.
When Jessica first approached the object, she wondered how relocating people who relied on the ocean for sustenance away from their primary food sources would have affected their cuisine. With little to no formal research done on the topic, she turned to unconventional sources for information. These included Japanese-Canadian cookbooks, memoirs of internment written by children, and digital magazine articles discussing Toronto cuisine cultures (Just Add Shoyu, 2010; Sakauye, 2013; Takashima, 1998). The research necessary to complete the narrative of how cuisine shifted as a result of internment was beyond the scope of this project. Instead, Jessica constructed an image of the culinary struggles in the internment camps, and ingredients most central to the cuisine, then and now, to connect the culinary resourcefulness of the past to the flavours of the present.
Interpretive Challenges
The diverse content of the objects posed many interpretation, research, and writing challenges for the authors. These challenges stemmed from a desire to “do justice” to the individuals and groups being represented through these objects and to produce stories that met the vision of TWM and their goal of discussing migration as an essential part of Canadian and Torontonian history. The remainder of this paper discusses three central issues that the authors struggled with in relation to the objects presented above: communicating why the objects and stories presented are relevant to a contemporary audience, discussing people and events where limited information is available, and representing cultural groups that are often Othered in these contexts.
Tying the Past to the Present
Central to the project, all students were tasked with making the past relevant to the present through their object stories. Writing for the TWM, the authors had to adhere to an institutional mission to connect past stories of migration to current Canadian readers. This connection was thus central to the authors’ interpretation strategies, but it was not always easy to produce. Since the objects discussed in this paper are from the early to mid-twentieth century and about a variety of individuals and groups, how to relate the story to a contemporary reader was not always immediately obvious.
The authors established the contemporary relevance of their objects through three main strategies. First, Maeghan and Serena followed TWM’s request to make the stories personal by tying an aspect of their object stories to their own experiences. Maeghan discussed her own experience exchanging postcards with her grandmother since migrating to Toronto to attend university, and compared the notes her grandmother sends to the notes sent to Olive Plowman at the turn of the 20th century. Serena also connected to her object story through a grandparent. She used the experience of her grandfather, living in Nazi-occupied Netherlands as a young child, to connect the story of women’s benevolence projects and the story of British overseas children to her own family history.
In representing challenging histories and discussing the experiences of groups to which they do not belong, Julia and Aurora both made an active choice to leave out their personal connections to their object stories. They relied on the ability of their audiences to connect what they were reading with current issues facing Canada. While Julia’s newspaper article mentioned German- and Italian-Canadians, as well as Japanese-Canadians, it became very clear to her during the interpretive process that lumping the three groups together would not be conducive to the discussion of the complex issues of race and ethnicity at play in the article. Instead of drawing a connection with her German and Italian heritage, she chose to focus on the experience of Japanese-Canadians as a visible minority who were experiencing both bottom-up and top-down racism. By describing the attitudes of paranoia and racism toward Japanese-Canadians, she trusted her audience would be able to make connections to other instances of racism in Canada during times of unrest or conflict. While she saw the opportunity to link her story to current mainstream Islamophobic sentiments, she ultimately concluded that attempting to discuss both issues did not allow her room to engage with either. Instead, she used the type of rhetoric that surrounds Islamophobia to discuss the treatment of Japanese-Canadians during WWII as a way of assisting her audience in making that connection.
Aurora similarly felt the need to let the history of the dinner menu stand for itself. By centring her discussion on the history of a national tourist icon, Banff National Park, and highlighting the problematic history between development in the national park and the treatment of Indigenous Canadians, Aurora wrote to educate visitors on how the hotel and park came to be, and what was sacrificed for it. As locations of Canadian tourism and pride, it was disappointing to learn that both the Banff Springs Hotel and Banff National Park do little to acknowledge their colonial constructions on their websites or through visitor tours and programming. By sharing a segment of truth, Aurora hopes to encourage visitors to explore these issues further and gain an awareness of Canadian history.
To make a contemporary tie to the unspoken culinary struggles faced by interned Japanese-Canadians, Jessica directed her audience to reconsider the tastes experienced while eating Japanese-Canadian cuisine in Canada. By weaving current culinary practice into her narrative, she chose to let the dishes of contemporary Japanese-Canadians stand as a representation of the hardships, and adaptability, they faced during internment.
Telling Stories with Limited Information
For a number of the objects in the project, there was a lack of secondary information and resources beyond what was present in their archival collections. This was particularly true where the objects’ owners or subjects were average individuals or members of minority groups. While associated archival material can provide the researcher with contextual information, the extent of such information varies. While Julia was able to identify additional content within the archives that provided insight into her topic, Maeghan found that the other material within her collection did not reveal information that helped develop her interpretation.
Though Maeghan wanted to focus on the original owner of her object as a means of providing a personal connection in line with TWM’s goals, there was very little direct information available about the owner of the postcard. As a result, she shifted her strategy to rely on more general information about the time her object was from to try to understand the societal context influencing the sending of postcards, rather than the immediate context leading to the mailing of the particular postcard featured. Not wanting to obscure the original owner, Maeghan used a second strategy in response to the challenge of limited information. She included what information that she had found about the owner and was transparent in her interpretation about her limited knowledge of the postcard’s recipient. This method allows the visitor to recognize that there are gaps in history, and to understand the nature of the information they are receiving.
Similarly, Serena used contextual information to inform her interpretation. By discussing the Women’s War Service Committee in relation to gender roles in the 1940s, she framed the work of the Committee as an outlet of women’s agency during World War II. By focusing on the broad picture, Serena could discuss the significance of wartime child evacuation for all of those involved. This larger social view supplemented the limited information available regarding the individuals who were involved in wartime child evacuation, either as evacuees or as hosts.
Jessica faced a different challenge in finding information for her interpretation. While possible sources of information existed, they proved difficult to access. In researching changing food habits in Japanese-Canadian internment camps, Jessica considered oral histories as a possible source of information. However, she was limited by the time and resource constraints necessary to receive ethics approval for collecting oral histories. Like Maeghan, Jessica responded to the challenge by shifting the focus of her interpretation. Instead of discussing the changing food practices in internment camps, she focused on what types of food were made available to interned Japanese-Canadians prior and during internment as a means of creating an image of the cuisine struggles internees faced. By discussing the differences and limits of ingredients at their disposal, Jessica provided her audience with the tools to consider the same questions she was asking herself about shifting food practices without explicitly addressing a topic she lacked the resources to discuss.
Representing Others
Perhaps the most difficult challenge faced by the authors involved the interpretation of objects that lent themselves to narratives about cultural groups to whom the interpreter did not belong. Museums have a long history of representing “Others” in ways that are now recognized as problematic. Considering that the objects represent a multicultural and diverse set of groups and individuals, the authors were dedicated to preventing this dichotomous “us-them” view. As a result, the authors aimed to provide a more nuanced discussion as a means of producing engaging and relatable interpretations.
Faced with this challenge, the authors tackled the need for thoughtful representation by applying several strategies. In addressing the problematic use of images of Indigenous peoples as a means of advertising the “natural” value of Banff National Park, Aurora focused on issues of transparency in the history of the park. By highlighting the ongoing and often strained relationship between the railway, the national park, and the Indigenous communities who resided in the area, her narrative aims to re-centre Indigenous rights in the discussion of the history of travel and tourism in Canada.
In addressing the mistreatment of Japanese-Canadians during World War II, Julia used a different strategy. She sought to highlight the resilience and agency of Japanese-Canadians and expand on the multiple levels of discrimination faced by Japanese-Canadians who were targeted by acts of individual racism as well as government-sanctioned racism. This approach aimed to problematize the dichotomous narrative presented by her object that depicted Japanese-Canadians solely as victims.
The final strategy that can be seen in both Aurora and Julia’s interpretive processes is the omission of a personal connection. While the TWM encouraged the personalization of the object stories, neither interpreter felt that they had a place inserting their own histories into the narratives they were telling. Instead, they let the stories of Indigenous and Japanese-Canadians stand on their own and trusted their audiences to make empathetic links with the groups they were representing.
Conclusion
This paper explored some of the strategies used by the authors in producing object interpretations for an online exhibition with the Toronto Ward Museum. In representing minority groups, the authors did not shy away from difficult histories of discrimination. Instead, they provided discussions of their objects that emphasized historical mistreatment and addressed the resilience and agency of the mistreated groups. In addressing the often limited information available for interpretation, the authors used common strategies of shifting focus and emphasizing contextual information. In working to tie the past to the present, some of the authors chose to make a direct link to their own lives, either through family history or through their own current practices. Others linked more generally to the common experience of trying new food. The remaining authors chose to discuss issues that are still present today, highlighting ongoing themes of discrimination as a way of reinforcing the relevance of their objects. Through their use of a combination of interpretive strategies, the authors have aimed to produce nuanced and engaging interpretations, and hope to provide a framework for others to do the same.
References
Hall, Lenie. (October 28, 1909). Postcard from Lenie Hall to Olive Plowman. Plowman Family Postcard Collection. (MS Misc. 12mo, postcard 70). Special Collections, John M. Kelly Library, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto.
Just Add Shoyu: A Culinary Journey of Japanese Canadian cooking. (2010). Toronto: Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.
Sakauye, R. (2013, May 30). The Great Generational Culinary Divide. Retrieved from http://www.torontoajc.ca/2013/05/31/the-great-generation-culinary-divide/
Takashima, S. (1998). A child in prison camp. Toronto, Ont.: Tundra Books.
Toronto Ward Museum. (2017). Retrieved from http://www.wardmuseum.ca
Varty, Carmen N. “‘A Career in Christian Charity’: Women’s Benevolence and the Public Sphere in a Mid-nineteenth-century Canadian City.” Women’s History Review 14, no. 2 (2005): 243–264.
Women’s War Service Committee. (1940). Report of the Sub-Committee for British Overseas Children. University of Toronto Women’s War Service Committee fonds. (B1972, 0004, Box 001, folder10). University of Toronto Archives and Records Management, Toronto.
Comments