There has been a recent movement nationally for revamping local historic sites, to ‘decolonize their narratives’, implying that what is depicted in these places is inherently shameful. Instead, the initiative is to broaden the use of these spaces to tell the stories of people about which less is known. I’m not against sharing stories of marginalized individuals and communities, but for me, if they’re not related to the site, then such places are not the best way to do so, as presenting them out of context is misrepresentative and bestows a false association which is confusing for the visitors.
In the current museum world, my views are well in the minority, and as a guide in an historical family home, I have to suppress my need for period consistency and deliver this juxtaposed content. I’m also not peculiarly au fait with the way in which these efforts zero in on specific groups, as ironically, by featuring certain ones in the name of inclusivity, we are actually excluding so many others not currently in the public eye. I think it’s also erroneous when we gloss over the context of how things were understood at the time in favour of our modern sensibilities of how we think things ought to have been.
Another parallel example is the recent push in many places to rename streets and institutions named for public figures now considered villainous. For me, this is problematic on a few fronts. First of all, I think it would be difficult to find any historical figure that is not flawed in some way and many of them, along with some clearly reprehensible actions, also accomplished a great deal of good. By erasing their existence altogether, we can never study their actions and properly evaluate their legacy. We must also be prepared to examine our current paragons of society in a similar fashion.
Furthermore, by investing so much time and money into wiping out the public face of such figures, we are wasting valuable resources that could be better used to solve problems that we have right now, all around us – homelessness, lack of affordability, mental health issues – to name but an obvious few, and where money and energy could be so much better spent. What does that say about us, that we would rather focus on sanitizing our distant past rather than face up to the immediacy of problems that surround us today?
History is a plurality and simplifying it with reductionist, loaded terms or worse, rebranding it to assuage any residual guilt we might feel over transgressions that transpired, really does more harm than good, by not fully exploring all of the complexities of various time periods, particularly as events would have been understood in the day.
If we reduce, edit and label our historical past with convenient simplifications, we will never truly understand or learn where we have come from, and the challenges overcome in order to progress. It also blinds us to our own continuing and urgent need to progress towards future improvements for all in our human and non-human world.