Open Collections

Kawamura, Naomi

University of British Columbia

Museums shape collective identity by presenting coherent narratives of a shared past. This research explores dimensions of collective memory and group identity by examining two community-founded museums, the Japanese American National Museum, and the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre. The forcible removal, dispossession, and incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry in the United States and Canada during the Second World War significantly influenced the representation of collective identity of the two communities that have long supported and operated these museums. In addition, preservation and education about the wartime experiences are the founding mandates of both museums in this study. As the survivors of the wartime removal and incarceration pass on, so are the generation of those who served as founding leadership of these community institutions. I employ a collective case study approach to explore how these museums prepared for and experienced the passing of an influential generation of survivor-witnesses and founders who have anchored these institutions. Specifically, I examine how the next generation of museum staff experiencing this critical transition is making sense of and conceptualizing collective identity, collective memory, and the future of these museums. My research focuses on the generation of museum staff who have no lived experiences of the wartime incarceration, but whose collective memories of the war have shaped their understandings of race, community, memory, and history. The analysis demonstrates that the successive generations of staff wrestle with issues of individual and group identity through their work, engage in practices that centre the cultivation of community, and explore ways to make space for previously occluded stories and identities. This study illustrates museums as active living sites where group identity evolves and emerges and where communities productively interrogate issues surrounding identity and memory.

Text

2024-01-03

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87060

Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/