Abstract: Canadian national mythology promotes the widespread idea of a peaceful, tolerant, multicultural nation built by and composed of immigrants. This mythology functions to sustain the ongoing settler colonialism and genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Using a case study of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba, I demonstrate how such a national mythology denies Indigenous claims to the space, relegates Indigenous peoples to the pre-modern or already extinct, and erases their resistance to and struggles with colonization from the here and now. Institutions such as the Museum operate as part of a larger national and political context which nurtures and sustains nationalist mythologies establishing Canada’s white settler society.
