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This collaborative talk by Drs. Lorena Sekwan Fontaine (University of Manitoba) and Dorota Glowacka (University of King's College) focuses on material objects and photographs that narrate the experiences of gender-based violence during the Holocaust and settler-colonial genocides in North America. The speakers — a daughter and granddaughter of survivors of Canadian residential schools and a daughter of a Holocaust survivor — jointly reflect on the history of gendered violence as a tool of war, genocide, and cultural destruction, viewed through the lens of material evidence housed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. They explore how these objects, preserved in museum collections, are more than silent witnesses to destruction; they serve as vehicles for telling complex stories of survival, cultural identity, and resistance. By examining material artifacts from these two instances of genocidal violence, the authors argue for the significance of these objects in preserving the memory of the past as well as in fostering solidarity among communities affected by past violence. They also highlight the transformative power of museum collections, questioning how these artifacts retain their cultural significance within institutional settings and how they are used to shape a collective memory of the violent past.

Lorena Sekwan Fontaine, a Cree and Anishinaabe member of the Sagkeeng First Nation, is the Department Head of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. Her forthcoming book, Living Language Rights: Constitutional Paths to Indigenous Language Education, will be published in Spring 2025. She is also the co-editor of a special issue of Genocide Studies International on "The Erasure and Revitalization of Indigenous Cultures and Languages."

Dorota Glowacka is Professor of Humanities at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Canada. She is the author of From the Other Side: Testimony, Affect, Imagination (2017), and Disappearing Traces: Holocaust Testimonials, Ethics, and Aesthetics (2012), and co-editor, among others, of a special issue of Journal for Holocaust Research on gender-based and sexual violence during the Holocaust (2024),  Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust (2007), and Between Ethics and Aesthetics: Crossing the Boundaries, 2002.