Path Towards Truth and Reconciliation at the Huron County Museum

by Bob Montgomery

The Senior Curator of the Huron County Museum was one of the guest speakers at last week's joint meeting of the Water Protection Steering Committee and the Sustainable Huron Steering Committee.

The theme of the meeting was the Path Towards Truth and Reconciliation. Elizabeth French-Gibson says they're really trying to open the doors of the Huron County Museum to telling more diverse stories and the Indigenous stories in the community are part of that. She adds they want to have Indigenous stories throughout the museum rather than just feature an Indigenous story one day and something else another day. They want to show how the stories work together. She says they also want the museum to be available to communities to tell their stories inside the building without museum staff directing that story. She says they want people to be able to come into the museum and hear the stories told by the people who have the expertise that museum staff members don't.

French-Gibson says they realize every story they tell isn't the only story and a lot of the stories from the community can overlap each other and they want to make sure that Indigenous stories are part of their stories. She says people coming through the museum often ask them about the things they don't know about the community and Indigenous stories are one of them and people are taking it upon themselves to learn about those stories, something she says wasn't happening when she went to school.

French-Gibson says there's still always room for improvement and for other voices to be heard, but she does believe that progress is being made and they want to be part of that. She says there is also a blog post on Indigenous stories on the museum's website.

Senior Curator Elizabeth French-Gibson