McCord Museum creates Indigenous Advisory Committee

The McCord Museum is pleased to announce the establishment of a permanent Indigenous advisory committee, whose primary focus is to take an informed, cross-disciplinary look at the Museum’s indigenization initiatives. The committee is composed of eight members, five Indigenous individuals active in academia, the arts and the community, along with three Museum staff members, including the Curator, Indigenous Cultures, who is himself Indigenous.

The Indigenous Advisory Committee, which began its work in June, is a platform for sharing and discussing the challenges of Indigenous museology. It will recommend approaches and initiatives for indigenizing the Museum, support the institution’s commitment to decolonize museological practices, and, in collaboration with the Collections Management team, analyze future requests for the repatriation of objects from the Indigenous Cultures collection. It will offer a cross-disciplinary perspective on Indigenous content in the Museum’s programming and bolster its efforts to hire and retain Indigenous staff, in accordance with its diversity, equity and inclusion policy.

“The committee and its dynamic members will accelerate our commitment to First Nations communities. It will amplify their voices, ensure the relevance of our indigenization initiatives and help us better understand and reach this important audience. It will also enable us to better serve First Nations communities by being more responsive to their needs. I would like to thank the committee members for accepting our invitation. I am certain that these discussions, undertaken in a spirit of openness, will be very beneficial for the Museum and its teams,” noted Suzanne Sauvage, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Museum.

Members of the Indigenous Advisory Committee

The committee includes Heather Igloliorte, Inuk researcher, independent curator and art historian from Nunatsiavut, and Associate Professor of Indigenous art history at Concordia University; Philippe Meilleur, of Mohawk ancestry, Executive Director of Native Montréal; Nadia Myre, multidisciplinary artist of Algonquin ancestry and co-founder of daphne an artist-run centre; Melissa Mollen Dupuis, Innu filmmaker and activist for Indigenous rights; and Karine Awashish, an Atikamekw community member, co-founder of Coop Nitaskinan and coordinator of the First Nations Social Economy Regional Table.

The members from the McCord Museum team are Suzanne Sauvage, President and Chief Executive Officer; Cynthia Cooper, Head, Collections and Research, and Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles; and Jonathan Lainey, member of the Huron-Wendat Nation and Curator, Indigenous Cultures.