Silencing of Context: Gareth Henry in Rights Today

By Dallas Cant*

This unauthorized audio-guide attempts to highlight the limitations of the museum’s representation of queer migration and queer activism in narratives of Canadian human rights advocacy. The guide situates a critique in the way particularities of activist Gareth Henry’s story are left out, or silenced to reinforce superficial understandings of queer reality, homophobic/transphobic violence, race, and nation.

Click here to read the audio guide script.

Sources Consulted

  • Awwad, Julian. “Queer Regulation and the Homonational Rhetoric of Canadian Exceptionalism.” Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalisms and the Politics of Belonging, edited by OmiSoore H. Dryden and Suzanne Lenon, UBC Press, Vancouver, 2015, pp. 19-34.
  • “Canadian Museum for Human Rights.” Canadian Musuem for Human Rights, https://humanrights.ca/home. Accessed 1 March 2018.
  • Lee, Edward O.J and Shari Brotman. “Identity, Refugeeness, Belonging: Experiences of Sexual Minority Refugees in Canada.” Canadian Review of Sociology, vol. 48, no. 3, 2011, pp. 241-74.
  • Luibhéid, Eithne. “Queer/Migration: An Unruly Body of Scholarship.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 14, no. 2-3, 2008, pp. 169-90.
  • Padgett, Tim. “The Most Homophobic Place on Earth.” Time Magazine, 12 Apr. 2006, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1182991,00.html.
  • Ritchie, Nicole A. “Queering Museums: Questions of Space, Affect, and the (Non)Normative.” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 2015.
  • Robert, Nicole. “Getting Intersectional in Museums.” Museums & Social Issues, vol. 9, no. 1, 2014, pp. 24-33, DOI: 10.1179/1559679314Z.00000000017.
  • Tyburczy, Jennifer. Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display. U of Chicago P, 2016.
  • Wall text, Rights Today, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
  • Ware, Syrus Marcus. “All Power to All People? Black LGBTTI2QQ Activism, Remembrance, and Archiving in Toronto.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 2, 2017, pp. 170-80, DOI: 10.1215/23289252-3814961.

Sound Credits
Voice: Dallas Cant
Effects:

  • “Ambient Music.” by Julia Dyck.
  • “Wedding-Bells.” Freesound, uploaded by Maurice_J_K, 4 June 2016, https://freesound.org/people/Maurice_J_K/sounds/346941/.
  • “Stereo Field Transport.” Freesound, uploaded Robinhood76, 5 March 2017, https://freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/383022/.

Image Credit
This image, taken by Dallas Cant, is of the Gareth Henry display in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Rights Today gallery.

Click here to return to the main page to see the other audio guides.

*Imagined, designed, recorded, and edited by Dallas Gillingham. Mastered by Julia Dyck.