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Florence Ng (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

As a university student, I had the chance to spend a year abroad in England. It was a dream come true as a literature major. One of the most wonderful things about countries in Western Europe is how remarkably well preserved many places are. The market square in the town I lived in was a thousand years old, with much of its unique, surrounding flintstone architecture still intact. Many homes are easily hundreds of years old. Coming from Canada, these are almost incomprehensible when the entirety of Canadian history (that we deem are important in our current educational climate) boils down to less than two hundred years. 

One need only to spend the day at the British Museum to understand why some countries are allowed to preserve their history and others aren’t. During my year abroad, I spent many days in this museum—it was like walking around the world, across time and space, all in one place. I remember giant Buddhist statues and Coast Salish totem poles, and all manner of things that had been pillaged and stolen from their original homes. By taking sacred objects out of context, England has written the narrative for the world over centuries. They have decided what is important, what is worthy of preserving, and which stories are allowed to persevere. 

This was made most apparent to me when I came across comparisons between old photographs of cities and their modern day counterparts. There are a plethora of “then and now” photos on the internet, but one that stood out the most to me was a two-hundred-year-old drawing of Oxford University juxtaposed with a photograph of the same street in 2022. The two images were nearly identical, and I could not imagine many other countries that could allow an entire street to remain so unchanged—certainly not places that have been grappling with the effects of colonization, the trauma of war, and the instability caused by both. 

It’s important to recognize the colonial lens which we have been taught to view the world. It’s important that we re-examine the rosy lens in which we view “explorers” in centuries past, and the role that storytelling has played in our understanding of history. The easiest example of this is the Indiana Jones franchise and all the assorted media in this genre of white academics being portrayed as heroes while they pilfer sacred objects in “exotic” locales for the noble task of bringing knowledge to the world. By world, of course, they mean museums, and by museums, they mean Eurocentric traditions of whitewashing history. The fact that Indiana Jones is getting a reboot in 2023 means that these ideas are alive and well, and as Sezin Koehler put it in her chronicle of Indiana Jones’ colonial legacy, if this reboot is “[…] not self-reflective and retroactively professing attrition for the many harms the figurehead and stories have caused, we categorically don’t need it.”

With the recent explosion of conversations around artificial intelligence and the tech industry’s insistence that their products will be the solution to all of humanity’s problems, it is too easy to discount the roots that our systems are built on. When we are urged to constantly look forward, it is easy to accept the past does not matter and the present is only a blip toward a grand future. Overlooking the discomfort is certainly a bonus. As a result, no one has to question our established institutions of science and education, particularly those that devalue and reject indigenous knowledge. Few can fathom what reciprocal, non-hierarchical society structures and holistic approaches to science and knowledge looks like, and I believe that to be deliberate. For more on comprehensive discussion on why ancient wisdom matters, I highly recommend Wade Davis’ collection of essays in Wayfinders. 

I love travelling and learning. This discussion is not meant to be a persecution of those things, nor is it a call to shut down all museums. As Audre Lorde said, “[i]t is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences,” and the more we learn about each other’s cultures, stories, and histories, the more we can celebrate. However, to quote Benita Joy, “[y]ou don’t dismantle white supremacy by ‘learning about other cultures.’ You dismantle white supremacy by dismantling whiteness.” The world’s colonial legacies have driven the narrative for centuries, and for both white and BIPOC folks out there who love to learn as I do, we can all stand to be a little more critical about how those narratives have coloured our inner and outer worlds. 

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Hello! My name is Florence, and I’m an educator, storyteller, traveller, avid board game collector and curious, lifelong learner, among many other things. I’m passionate about human connection and mental well-being, and I love meeting new people!