City of Surrey to work with province to build a South Asian museum in the city
The Museum Liberation Force hopes the museum will act as a safe space for community members
A photo from the Komagata Maru incident, one of the most well-known injustices Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu people faced in Canada. (File photo)
City of Surrey council members have unanimously voted to work with the province to build the proposed Canadians of South Asian Heritages Museum or Cultural Centre in Surrey.
In a council session on Dec. 2, Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke notified the province of the city’s interest in having the museum or cultural centre be located in Surrey.
“Surrey is home to a vibrant South Asian community and Council is committed to collaborating with the province to bring a South Asian Museum or Cultural Centre to life in our city,” Locke said in a press release. “We have a remarkable opportunity to establish a cultural treasure that honours the rich history, diverse stories, and bright future of South Asian Canadians.”
The city has identified a number of “strategic locations” where the centre could be built, but a construction timeline has not yet been given.
The museum was a BC NDP 2020 election promise. The City of Vancouver is also working with the government to have the museum built in the city, but no final decision has been made.
The delay in construction, along with other frustrations, led Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra, an instructor at the University of the Fraser Valley, to leave the museum’s advisory committee.
Sandhra went on to establish the Museum Liberation Force with friends and colleagues to keep conversations about the museum alive and question the government’s process and delays with the project.
“I’m encouraged by the fact that municipalities are perking up and paying attention now,” Sandhra says. “Frankly, I’m glad that there are other municipalities challenging the Vancouver-centric expectation that the museum should be in Vancouver.”
The group held a “Where is Our Museum?” panel in the spring, and has since been in contact with museum organizers. They have also organized community engagement and discussions on the topic by making use of $500,000 in provincial funds provided to the BC Museums Association.
“I can’t emphasize how much museums matter in our envisioning of our own identities, ourselves, and our place in this world and in this province,” Sandhra says.
The spring panel also attracted members of the “I am not South Asian” campaign, who are pushing to remove the term South Asian from the name of the museum, which has still not been finalized.
“I’m against [the term South Asian] because it erases my unique, particularly Punjabi Sikh identity,” Sandhra says. “Punjabi Sikh histories in British Columbia, as a historian who’s been doing that work for more than 20 years, is a very unique, important history that should be acknowledged.”
While Sandhra is critical of the use of the term, she says the “I am not South Asian” movement has lost its original vision through “toxic and aggressive” conversations.
The Museum Liberation Force hopes the museum will act as a safe gathering, or “third” space, to gather publicly and have conversations on topics that impact members of their community.
“I think there are creative ways that we don’t even need to have the word South Asian .… [The museum] is going to tell many different stories and be a space for us to come together [and] to talk to each other,” Sandhra says.
“The name to me does matter, but the word South Asian in that space does not matter.”
To read our previous coverage on this topic, visit www.bit.ly/southasianmuseum.
