Engaging with the Museum of Anthropology

Event Date & Time

Event Description

The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) is a resource for instructors across campus. It provides a rich venue for discussion of many complex issues students struggle with understanding particularly in terms of diversity and cultural differences. 

The exhibition, c̓əsnaʔəm, the city before the city, focuses on the Musqueam village of c̓əsnaʔəm, occupied for over 4,000 years. c̓əsnaʔəm, the city before the city demonstrates Musqueam’s continuous connection to their territory, despite the many changes to the land. It invites students and instructors to engage with Musqueam identity and worldview, through language, oral history, and the community’s recent actions to protect c̓əsnaʔəm. An online toolkit, developed as part of the Engage UBC project, is being used to create modules for instructors to use with their students.

During this session we will:

• Introduce the exhibit and the complexities of Aboriginal representation in a Museum environment.
• Discuss different approaches instructors could take to prepare students to use this exhibit in their classrooms.
• Demonstrate the online resources developed to assist students to engage with the museum and the exhibition c̓əsnaʔəm, the city before the city.

Presenter Bios – Susan Rowley, co-head of the UBC Department of Anthropology, and Jordan Wilson, a Musqueam community member and graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, are co-curators of the MOA exhibit, c̓əsnaʔəm, the city before the city.

Please note this session will be held in the Irving K Barber Learning Centre in Room 2.22.