Anti-racist and Activist Work Through Museum/Community Collaboration With The Reach Gallery and Sikh Heritage Museum/South Asian Studies Institute SharanjitKaur Sandhra, Coordinator, South Asian Studies Institute, University of the Fraser Valley Kris Foulds, Curator of Historical Collections, The Reach Gallery Museum
Approximately 23% of Abbotsford residents are South Asian.
The first Sikhs arrived in the Abbotsford in 1905 from the Punjab in India and settled in the valley by working on farms and in the forest. As with other settler groups, many found work with the Abbotsford Lumber Company at Mill Lake.
Although still a mainly bachelor society due to the restrictive immigrations laws, in 1908 the Abbotsford Sikh community began construction of a temple. It would provide a place to worship but just as importantly, a place for the community to come together. Established members of the community purchased a one acre property on a prominent hill adjacent to the mill at Mill Lake. The Trethewey brothers, owners of the mill, donated the lumber for the temple and millworkers carried it to the temple site on their shoulders.
The temple s exterior, wood frame building with a false front and a gabled roof, is typically western architecture, similar to many buildings in many Canadian frontier towns, and provided an unmistakable message that local Sikhs were working to integrate into the largely white community. The building still embodied architectural elements important in Sikh traditions and religious beliefs: the second floor prayer room housed the sacred text, the Guru GranthSahib, and provided an open space for worshippers to sit, cross-legged on the carpet. The ground floor contained a kitchen and a dining hall where the langar (communal meal) was prepared and eaten, affirming the equality of those who partake of it. Doors opened from the prayer hall in all four directions, welcoming all.
On February 26, 1912 the Gur Sikh Temple was declared open. Sikhs from all over British Columbia came to take part in the ceremonies. The Abbotsford Post reported that the non-sikh community present observed the requirement to remove their shoes and cover their head with a scarfbefore entering the temple. Curiosity rather than acceptance seemed to bring the Sikh and non-sikh communities together. A local housewife recorded her thoughts on a Hindoo Cremation : Our girls rushed home from school with an excited and unusual request, Can we go up and see a Hindoo being burned? She further records, mobs of school children and their wondering parents in attendance.
Earlyphotos clearlyillustrateignorance of the Sikh religion. The authorof the note on thisphoto claimed therewasno slightintended;that we(she) justdidn tknow anybetter.
The heritage temple was enlarged at the rear in 1932 to extend the prayer hall and a second addition was built in the late 1960s. In December 1927, the local branch of the Native Sons of Canada approached the District Board of Trade with a proposal to eliminate Oriental labourat the local mill. When the management of the mill refused to comply, local activists sent each MP a short length of ALM&D Co lumber labelled: British Columbia Forests a Souvenir! With compliments of the Native Sons of Canada. I am a Native of British Columbia, produced to this stage by 65% Oriental labor. July 9, 1930 Abbotsford, Sumas & Matsqui News Abbotsford Lumber Co. sawmill resumed work this week minus a force of 40 or 50 Orientals which has been given employment at the local plant for two or three generations. Faced with the necessity of curtailing production and laying off a large force of men, the management reciprocated the community s goodwill, made a week ago, by readjusting crews so that few, if any, of the white men would be thrown out of employment. We have in our province 46,000 Oriental who are unfairly competing with white labor.
On July 31, 2002 Prime Minister Jean Chretien officiated at the ceremony to declare the Gur Sikh Temple a National Historic Site. In 2003, the Khalsa Diwan Society undertook the restoration of the temple and reopened it on April 1, 2007.
The heritage temple was enlarged at the rear in 1932 to extend the prayer hall and a second addition was built in the late 1960s. In 2007, David Jensen was leading community partners through planning for the Abbotsford Cultural Centre. Among the partners was the newly created Centre for Indo Canadian Studies (2006) who helped introduce the new organization to the Khalsa Diwan Society and the larger Indo Canadian community. The CICS helped develop the content for The Reach s opening exhibition, People of the Valley. Prior to the opening of the Sikh Heritage Museum The Reach provided exhibition space for the CICS developed exhibitions and the CICS facilitated community inclusivity in Reach-developed exhibitions and programs.
The heritage temple was enlarged at the rear in 1932 to extend the prayer hall and a second addition was built in the late 1960s. In 2010, CICS, the Khalsa Diwan Society and the communitybeganto plan for the Gur Sikh Temple centenary. CICS and The Reach partneredto applyfor funding and coordinatea full yearof communityevents and a legacyproject the Sikh Heritage Museum.
In 2011, the community celebrated the centennial of the Gur Sikh Temple. As part of the year-long celebration, was a ceremony in August when Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended to recognize both the significance of the Temple itself and the long history of the Sikh community that preserved it. A legacy of the Centennial celebrations is the Sikh Heritage Museum, which was officially opened by Lieutenant Governor Stephen Point on December 18, 2011. On August 28, 2011 Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined the centennial celebrations and unveiled the monument that marked the centennial. Lieutenant Governor Steven Point officially opened the Sikh Heritage Museum on December 18, 2011.
In 2011, the community celebrated the centennial of the Gur Sikh Temple. As part of the year-long celebration, was a ceremony in August when Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended to recognize both the significance of the Temple itself and the long history of the Sikh community that preserved it. A legacy of the Centennial celebrations is the Sikh Heritage Museum, which was officially opened by Lieutenant Governor Stephen Point on December 18, 2011. In May, 2017, the Right HonourablePrime Ministerof Canada, Justin Trudeau made his first official visitto Abbotsford as PM by visitingthe National HistoricSite
The Sikh Heritage Museum Since opening in 2011, the Sikh Heritage Museum has put on nine exhibits The Sikh Heritage Museum received the Award of Merit at the 2016 BC Museums Association Awards Gala
Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950) It would have been better not to have needed them [the museum]; that Europe would have done better to tolerate the non-european civilization at its side, leaving them alive, dynamic and prosperous, whole and not mutilated; that it would have been better to let them develop and fulfill themselves than to present for our admiration, duly labelled, their dead and scattered parts; that anyway, the museum by itself is nothing; that it means nothing, that it can say nothing, when smug self-satisfaction rots the eyes, when a secret contempt for others withers the heart, when racism, admitted or not, dries up sympathy. Decolonizing the Museum Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) The form of imperialism which indigenous peoples are confronting now emerged from that period of European history known as the Enlightenment Notions about the Other, which already existed in the European imagination, were recast within the framework of Enlightenment philosophies, the industrial revolution and the scientific discoveries of the 18 th and 19 th centuries.
Andrew Dewdney, Post Critical Museology (2013) The conventional museum paradigm [is getting] turned on its head: it is not about finding ways for the world and its peoples to participate in the museum; it is about finding ways for the museum to participate in the lives of people of the world. Museology Today Viv Golding, Learning at the Museum Frontiers: Identity, Race and Power (2009) The historical power of the museum can be seen not only to confirm conventional social hierarchies, but also to mark the overturning of older orders of control that the notion of museum frontier space I have been expounding refers to more than physical structures; it alludes to spatial practices experiences created through interaction between people in a spatial location where they feel safe to explore creatively individual and collective histories. it is a third space.
Sharing our stories and experiences The Power of Narrative Being an ally the non-sikh comfort level face Touring the Sikh Heritage Museum together Troubleshooting the awkward questions Heritage Fair No longer about pleasing Evangelism as a form of racism Solidarity and the Museum Our Partnership and Friendship The South Asian Studies Institute and the Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford
Thank you! Sharanjit.Sandhra@ufv.ca kfoulds@thereach.ca