Course:IGS585/OK2023WT2/LakeCountryMuseum
Lake Country Museum
- For your reflection on another class member's reflection, start by typing your name and using the 'Sub-heading 1' style from the pulldown menu
Emma Carey
- Visiting the Lake Country Heritage Museum was a really fascinating experience. Seeing the care that goes into that small museum with few available resources was heartwarming. You could feel the dedication of the staff and the director (I don’t remember the name of the woman who gave us the tour unfortunately). The exhibits were a bit disjointed, for example the large bug collection that was not fully integrated into the rest of the collection. It was a little hard to understand the overall story of the area, but our capable guide did a good job of narrating for us. If she hadn’t been there, I would have felt a bit lost.
- I was fascinated by the history of colonialism of the area. The Syilx have lived in the region of millenia, so it’s interesting that history museums frequently begin their timeline at colonial contact and usually from a very Eurocentric viewpoint. This museum had a really interesting display of beadwork and weaving from various Indigenous Peoples. It was inspiring their goals of repatriating these spiritual objects to the Nations they belong to. I loved that rather than solely putting words to decolonization they are actively doing something in their line of work, as evidenced by the pieces they already repatriated with the Syilx Nation.
- The colonialism of museums is such a problem and it was good to see a museum doing that work with a good heart and right actions. I’ve been thinking about colonialism a lot lately as I’ve been taking an Indigenous Research Methods course. We’ve been reading a chapter a week of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (2021) Decolonizing Methodologies and her critiques of Western colonial science enacted on Indigenous Peoples is scathing and rightfully so. She discusses how anthropologists, archeologists, biochemists, and various other disciplines are directly culpable in stealing from Indigenous Peoples. Museums are sites where spiritual objects stollen from Indigenous Peoples come to rest. Part of the process of decolonization involves repatriating these stollen objects that don’t ethically belong to the museum.
- I was a bit sad to hear that the Lake Country Museum has been stymied with further efforts of repatriation by a lack of staff resources. I’m considering volunteering during the summer to help them with this. It would be nice to help enact change on some level that is grounded in the many courses and learnings from this year. It’s also a good way to give back to the community. In this case, it’s also a concrete action that I can do as a settler to help right the wrongs of colonialism and actively work towards decolonization in a local setting with an issue that matters to me. I find it a bit saddening that the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto where I’m from, has been paying less attention to these issues while having more resources to enact changes. Last time I visited in Dec 2022, they had made a few changes particularly around Indigenous peoples of Canada, but they have made very little progress on their collections that have objects from global Indigenous Peoples like the Sami.
- References Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books. https://go.exlibris.link/pYTGqpvY
JAJ: I also noticed the Syilx items, and the complexity of repatriation. Our guide mentioned that the beaded moccasins were most likely a special object that held meaning to a family, while the basked may simply have been something made for trade. This emphasized to me that our relationship with Indigenous peoples is not as simple as everything with an Indigenous element must have been stolen by colonizers. Sometimes there were mutually agreed exchanges. Teasing apart which is which is a challenge, as there are no records.
Amir's Reflection on Emma's Reflection
Emma is a student of sustainability theme like me, and I had the chance to be on several courses with her. Her commitment and responsible approach, as a Western settler, towards Canada as the ancestral home of Indigenous peoples, are commendable. Even her research methodology is based on indigenous research methods, and most of the questions she usually asks in classes are circling around indigenous research methods and seeing the object through an Indigenous perspective not only as a settler. Her statements have presented a real challenge for me, as someone with no prior knowledge of museums and their specialized topics, particularly in how these assets should be returned to their rightful owners, yet how one can ignore the educational role of these objects for the people. This contradiction between rights and interests may still be unanswered for me. And if I were to be honest, even though based on my prior knowledge, I might have leaned towards supporting the preservation of objects in museums, after attending classes with Astrida Neimanis and the faith I have in Emma's increased competence in this matter, my vote is also closer to returning objects to Indigenous peoples. At the same time, I admire how Emma tries to do something practically instead of just doing theoretical research. Therefore, I think its necessary for me to be more practical and productive in a way that contributes to real changes in the objectives I concern about.
Cole Hooper
The trip to the Lake Country Heritage Museum was interesting, especially as someone who has spent sometime in the area before. I have never been to that part of Lake Country before, and had no idea about the history of that area, or even about the new development that is occurring there now. If I am being honest, I do not know if I found the Museum to be a very useful trip in helping guide the development of the sustainability project for my group. That being said, that does not mean that I learned nothing, and found it useless. The most interesting thing that I learned during the trip was actually how the town was actually quite multicultural from early on it's development. The presence of Japanese and South Asian families, was occurring very early in this area. However, without much information on the current state of the area, it is hard to say if this is still an important part of the current identity of Lake Country.
What I almost found more useful for our planned project was driving around while getting to and leaving the museum. I think the Museum visit helped contextualize this, by providing photos, and giving us an idea of life in the area, prior to it's more recent urban expansion. But to actually be driving the roads, and seeing the scale, and breadth of the newer development helped cement the reality of the sustainability issues that we are all aiming to address.
What actually comes to mind as far as the purpose of a museum visit, was how it itself could have been the target for a sustainability project. The current museum is clearly a bit disorganized, and lacking funding. It is also disconnected from the main are of Lake Country, further evidenced by the fact that some of us (who have spent some prior time in the area) had no idea it was in that location. I can imagine that many of the newer residents and visitors of Lake Country are also unaware of it's existence.
However, the history of an area is directly tied to our perspective of that place. That perspective will dictate how we use resources there, interact with nature, and even behave within our communities. A museum, which is simply a place that can help inform that perspective, thus seems like a prime candidate for a targeted campaign to help educate people on sustainability issues. Perhaps a future project could work to update the museum, to make it more relevant and helpful to the new influx of residents that are moving to the area. Being able to move around in, and interact with exhibits, is a way of learning that connect with a lot of people. Additionally, when you consider the approach of the Community Plan for Lake Country, this idea would seem to fit perfectly within their narrative for an integrated and modern community. Topics covered at the Museum could be tied to all the elements of sustainability, whether it has to do with wildlife, transportation, land use, reconciliation, and more. Museums are the perfect venue to address these issues, and help contextualize them for the constituents of Lake Country, so it is a bit sad that the current state of the Museum is not able to facilitate this.
JAJ: I am glad that the drive was also valuable. That was deliberate on my part, so you could see the massive transformation of the landscape that is taking place. It saddens me to see what I consider the beautiful and fragile open ponderosa forests on the slopes overlooking the lake disappearing as sprawling developments where many people's experience of this place won't go much beyond sitting on their deck enjoying a barbecue and the view. However, I guess that perspective reflects some of my tastes and values.
Armita's Reflection on Reflection
It was intteresting to me that Cole mentioned this visit was not useful for their project because I hadn't considered the visit itself as a means to directly enhance our project. Instead, I viewed it as an opportunity to become more acquainted with the place we are working on. I believe it's essential to understand the history of a place before attempting to improve it. This presented a significantly different viewpoint for me. As I'm not very familiar with this location, I initially overlooked the fact that the museum's location isn't very straightforward. Now, paying more attention to this issue, I realize that they might not even have adequate parking, especially for school trips, making it inconvenient for visitors. I agree that more budget should be allocated to the museum, as these places are somewhat the heart of a city's history. Not only new visitors can find the place more attractive to visit which can be good for boosting tourism and drawing fresh interest to the town, but also residents can also feel a stronger connection to the place they live in. Thus, it's crucial to make the museums of cities desirable.
Cole's idea to update the museum so it's more fun and interesting for everyone, especially with all the new folks moving here, sounds like a great plan. It could help connect old stories with today's efforts to live in a greener way. Also, fitting the museum into Lake Country's bigger picture of trying to be more sustainable is smart. It shows how everything in our town, including places like the museum, is important for making us more aware of how to be better to our environment.
Jared Brown
Going to the Lake Country Museum was an enjoyable and valuable learning experience for me. It always surprises me how rich and diverse the history of smaller communities can be, especially given that the DLC population is a largely white settler community and does not appear to be as culturally diverse as some of the larger cities like Vancouver, Victoria, and Toronto. It was also nice to see that the museum is actively trying to return its Indigenous artifacts back to their communities of ownership, given that many exhibits in the museums throughout North America and Europe were taken without consent and have not been returned since. I would also like to thank our guide for showing us around and telling us about how each of the displays tie back to the community (I also forgot her name unfortunately).
I was also interested to see how much of their agricultural display was based around apples, with only a small display for the community’s wine industry and nothing else that I saw for other fruits produced in the area. It gave me the impression that apple farming is an important agricultural symbol for the fruit production of the community, and it would seem to be important for the province as well, given that it is the main fruit of choice that is advertised by BC Tree Fruits and The BC Fruit Growers Association (look both up on Google Images and you will see). Of course, the large apple display could also be due to the industry being older and having more resources available to donate, but nonetheless it gives me hope that as I conduct my research on Okanagan apple production that both apple farmers and the communities they inhabit will be excited by the idea and the potential results of that research.
The most important takeaway I got from this experience was that going to museums and examining the history of a community is a critical step towards planning for the future of that community, regardless of whether that planning concerns sustainability or otherwise. Seeing the history of Lake Country in regards to the objectives of this class reminds me of a book that I read last semester called Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis (Jonsson & Wennerlind, 2023), which examines how past scholars have viewed the relationship between the environment and economy in order to help foster new ideas to replace the current capitalist economy of consumption and mastery over nature. Some likely wonder why we should look at the past in order to solve the problems of the present and future. To quote the author’s words: “Why not simply jettison entirely the baggage of history and start anew?” (Jonsson & Wennerlind, 2023). While the authors answer this question specifically to the concept of scarcity, one of the points they make that can be applied to history in general is that looking at history can: “uncover paths not taken. In this sense, the past forms a storehouse of lost ideas and forgotten questions” (Jonsson & Wennerlind, 2023). By looking at the history of Lake Country over time, we can see what elements make up the character of the community along with what beliefs and ideals its inhabits care about, which in turn can help us think of about what perspectives and values we need to incorporate in our proposals for making the city more sustainable and resilient. I think that before developing any kind of plan/project, planners should examine the history of the communities they are in to get a sense of what is important to preserve and keep in mind.
References:
Jonsson, F. A., & Wennerlind, C. (2023). Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890690
JAJ: I like how you tied this visit to your Jonsson and Wennerlind reading. It is a book I was not aware of - there are so many books - and perhaps should have a look at. I think that the dominance of the apple industry reflects how important an industry it was. The wine industry is relatively new, as I understand it a 'lucky' consequence of climate change and a trade deal. Prior to the first free trade agreement with the US, Canadian wines were heavily protected by trade rules, and Canadian wine producers were known for their poor quality. The wine industry was seen as a sacrifice to protect other sectors, so border protections where reduced or eliminated. Farmers were paid to rip out their old grapes and plant something else. Some growers had been experimenting with European varieties, which the slowly warming climate had begun to make viable. They replaced their old grapes with more valuable varieties, and started an industry nobody expected.
Leandro impression of impression
Jared had valuable insights into the rich and diverse history of smaller communities. We had a similar perception about the museum's efforts to return Indigenous artifacts to their rightful communities, which is commendable, reflecting a growing awareness and respect for cultural heritage. The highlighting of apple farming in the agricultural display as it underscores its significance in the community and the province, potentially indicates a fruitful area for his research on Okanagan apple production. The critical role of understanding a community's history in planning its future, allows us to uncover forgotten ideas and untaken paths, providing a richer context for sustainable and resilient planning. The visit and Jared's impression remind me of the importance of preserving and considering community history in any planning endeavour.
Armita Tehranchi
I am happy that we went there not only because one of the community garden that we wanted to build was near to that museum and I could see it in person and get more ideas about it but also because it was my first experience of visiting a museum in Canada. Visiting the museum in Lake Country proved to be an enlightening journey, markedly different from my prior experiences with museums in Iran, where they stand as guardians of ancient history and tradition. In contrast, the Lake Country museum emerged as a dynamic space that narrates the local community's living history and identity, challenging my expectations of museums as static repositories of the past. In Iran, museums are revered sanctuaries that house the vestiges of a glorious history, presenting narratives that seem distant and enshrined. However, the museum in Lake Country captivated me with its immediate and accessible storytelling, weaving the past with the present to illustrate how history continually shapes the community's identity. This museum didn't merely showcase bygone eras but actively engaged visitors in the ongoing story of Lake Country, highlighting the active role museums can play in fostering community belonging and identity.
The museum's approach to inclusivity and engagement particularly struck me. For instance, the medical exhibits, with their vividly designed drug packaging and practical instructions for electric shock treatment, raised questions about accessibility and public health awareness in the past. Using the same design and color for baby lotion showed that there are things that don’t change during the time like pink being traditionally associated with femininity and softness. Moreover, the selective historical focus on Chinese community regulations prompted reflections on the evolution of societal norms and the subtler forms of exclusion that persist today. Wish some parts could explained about that cause literature also plays an important part. Another notable aspect was the museum's interactive elements, especially designed for children. This approach starkly contrasts with the museums of my homeland, where interactions are often limited to observation. By inviting children to engage directly with exhibits, the Lake Country Museum breaks the stereotype of museums being exclusive to adults or enthusiasts. It suggests that museums can play a crucial role in shaping young minds, making history and culture accessible and engaging for all ages. The inclusion of modern technology, like QR codes linking to music and further information, enhanced the visitor experience, blending historical exploration with contemporary accessibility. This innovative feature not only deepened my engagement with the exhibits but also sparked curiosity to explore beyond the museum walls. I could not find anything related to art and poetry.
Reflecting on this visit, I've come to appreciate the transformative potential of museums. No longer just custodians of the past, they can be vibrant spaces that reflect and influence community life, fostering a sense of identity and belonging. The journey through the Lake Country museum was more than a mere exploration; it was an invitation to rethink the essence of what museums represent. It demonstrated that museums could be as diverse and dynamic as the communities they serve, emphasizing the importance of embracing new experiences for personal and intellectual growth. This visit has not only expanded my worldview but also reaffirmed the significance of museums in fostering a deeper connection with our collective heritage and contemporary identity.
JAJ: Thanks for the contrast with your experience in Iran. Finding ways to make visiting a museum appealing for people of all ages has been pursued in Canada for a couple of decades at least. It is so easy now to engage with fictional tales of history through media. Museums like this provide an opportunity to see the artifacts for real, and I hope that for young people in particular, it has more meaning than just looking it up online.
Emma's reflection on Armita
Armita’s reflection on the difference between museums she’s visited before to the more dynamic museum of Lake Country was really fascinating. I have also visited museums that have taken a similar approach of making history quite ‘enshrined’, I’m thinking of a museum I visited in Kyoto, Japan about the Edo period. That museum was quite uninteractive, although there were some very well-done videos and the artifacts within the museum were fascinating. It wasn’t a worse museum per se, but it did very much use the approach of a historic past that was a certain way rather than showing some of the complexities of the era and how it connects to modern times. I really enjoyed Armita’s thoughts around the role museums can take in actively shaping culture. This is one of the reasons I quite like the downtown Kelowna art gallery. While it is small, it is quite mighty in the topics it covers through art. When I was there in the fall, they had an exhibit of prints from Mary Smith McCulloch (Kelowna Art Gallery, 2023). As a woman from Scotland, that moved to Canada and spent much of her life here, the exhibit engaged with human migration, land, and belonging. I particularly loved her environmental themes that blended into her work so seamlessly. Art can be a great medium for changing and influencing culture. Armita, I think you might like to go to the downtown art museum.
References
Kelowna Art Gallery. (2023). As Above So Below. Kelowna, BC.
Amir Rahsaz
Visiting the museum was a perfect opportunity for me, as an immigrant, to explore the roots and colonial history of the region and its development process more genuinely. The museum's environment and its layout preserved the local and rural identity of the area, adopting an unpretentious and unconventional storytelling approach, making it suitable for expressing its history. Our guide, who eagerly tried to convey as much information as possible in a brief time, significantly contributed to enriching this few-hour tour.
For me, the tour began from the start of the journey and the Lake Country route, where I attempted to explore the Lakeside area as a designer to potentially guide our project towards a more useful output. The museum's interior, which caught my attention the most, was the multicultural foundation of Lake Country, formed by several immigrant families from Japan, India, and beyond. It showed how a limited number of individuals from one culture could change the cultural fabric of a region over time. Stories told about the evidence of Spain's army presence and struggles around this area during the colonial era revealed another aspect of colonialism and the hidden turmoil behind the current tranquility.
In my personal view, objects themselves narrate stories and convey them to the audience in their unique way. This was more evident in the intimate layout of this museum, which is undoubtedly different from professional museums. Objects played a larger role in storytelling than usual, and their contribution to narration exceeded that of objects in other museums. The city of Lakes Country is famous for being the apple capital of Canada, and the development process, design, and packaging graphics of apples highlighted the importance of branding. The specialization that people in this area had in apple packaging and sorting competitions and the tools they made for teaching emphasized how a product can create the identity of a region. It also showed that globalization is potentially depriving various places of their potential in creating their own identity in diverse ways.
I have previously visited museums in Iran, and particularly, I have seen examples of indigenous water supply methods in desert areas. Comparing those methods with the ones employed in Lake Country was remarkably interesting. The role of water manager in organizing water and distributing it among the locals, and even their role in repairing the water supply network, is entirely different from the Middle Eastern style. This difference was fascinating to me.
JAJ: Water is critical in the Okanagan for growing higher valued crops on the low elevation areas. The annual precipitation in the Kelowna area is not much more than 300mm. The open Ponderosa forest with sparse underbrush and grassland is what would be in this area without irrigation. I too find the ways that people have found ways to bring water to where they need it to have productive agriculture fascinating. The technology and the social and institutional relationships that are together needed to achieve such feats are something I have not become bored with.
I also like your recognition that apple production is part of an identity for the area, at least among longer term residents. While agriculture has become a relatively small share of the economy, it is still a defining feature for many.
Jared Brown - Reflection on Amir's Reflection
Amir’s reflection offered quite valuable insight for me regarding how history should be interpreted. He clearly paid significant attention to how each of the exhibits and objects in the museum convey a story about the history and identity of Lake Country. Being from the sciences, I’ve generally looked at history from a more objective approach. Rather than trying to see what kinds of personal stories can be told by historical objects, I’ve often looked at them to find out what universal truths about a community can be discovered. For example, seeing the display from Lake Country’s apple industry led me to take away that the industry is symbolically important for the agricultural identity of the community. Amir on the other hand, was able to see how the sorting competitions and the methods for both packaging apples and teaching workers helped create a more personal identity for Lake Country. Seeing his reflection has reminded me that while the history of most communities has a partial form of objective truth, history is also partially what we make of it, and it is important to analyze it from both an objective and subjective perspective. Both are critical, after all, both objectivity and subjectivity are important to have in order to achieve sustainability and resilience. I certainly agree with him that this element of Lake Country’s identity has diminished over time, but I find myself slightly disagreeing for why that is the case. I think globalization has certainly played a role, in part due to the competition placed on the BC apple industry by Washington State just south of the Canada – U.S. border. However, Lake Country’s agriculture has also changed over time too, shifting away from apples towards more profitable crops such as cherries and wine grapes. In any case, it shows that like science, the identity of a community is not static, but rather it is dynamic and changes over time. I suppose it is up to its members to decide whether those changes to their community’s identity are a good or bad thing.
Leandro Biondo
I work in a research institution that also has a museum ( and we just broke the yearly visitor record there with 100K visitors last year! I think you can use the translation from the browser: https://www.gov.br/inma/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/museu-de-biologia-prof-mello-leitao-bate-recorde-de-publico-em-2023-e-alcanca-100-mil-visitantes ), primarily a biology one so our most significant assets are the animal and plant collections, but we do have historical buildings and a lot of material from the 1950s until today. This experience has turned me into a visitor who is sometimes more interested in management, staff guidance, visual offerings, and detailed data on what is exposed.
The Lake Country Museum gave me a really good impression of our visit; it is such a small yet full of information place. Canada's history, the way we see it today, is young; sometimes, we feel that objects that store memories from the facts that happened here are almost our life registries. We all have had lives compatible with Canada's independent history (1982 constitution, I have the same impression in Brazil with its 1988 one). Sure, that was history from the Europeans who arrived before and a much less known preceding human civilization built by the first nations who were here before. That can be discussed over the museum's exposed items, such as what other people find essential from this history and what we know less about and should try to recover while it is in people's memories and unofficial registries.
I was surprised by the Japanese and Chinese history in the current seasonal exposition (although Oyama caught my attention when I first went to Vernon), the hardness of what happened not so long ago and how you can get more details from relatives still around the city. It is history being made and told in ways other places could not do, considering similar events happened long ago and probably were lost in the ordinary people's memories. The museum is a significant reference for the Okanagan region and probably should be more visited by people around here. This takes me to another important aspect of cultural and heritage places today: they need adaptation to digital life; we have the challenge of making it attractive to kids and future generations. I grew up going to museums. I remember most of them, but the popularity and survival of these buildings do not have much good news.
What to do next is not the million dollar answer, but more a needed medicine for an apparent society's dementia, everywhere.
JAJ: The contrast between the recent history in Canadian and Brazilian museums as contrasts those in the 'old world' is something that really stands out for visitors from Europe, such as some of my relatives. Those peoples had technologies - stone building, iron tools - that survive a long time and leave a record. People have lived in the Okanagan for thousands of years. However, throughout much of the Americas (with some notable exceptions such as the Anasazi, the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas) there are far fewer physical remnants that are easy to understand. As we learn more, both from the stories of Indigenous peoples and from advancing archeological research, we can start to add more details about how those Indigenous peoples thrived here in the Okanagan before the more recent colonists arrived.