>> Drawing from primary source documents, this easy to read PDF by Kimiko Marr tells the whole story <<
Notable Highlights:
The Six Points
Part 10 – The Six Points (p. 40): On September 7, 2021, the Wakasa Memorial Committee sent its first official letter to the Topaz Museum Board, listing six measures that the Board could take to “remedy the problems that the Museum’s actions have given rise to.”
The Six Points (for collaborative solution)
- Recognition of the Wakasa Memorial Committee and its Advisory Council
- Apology for Desecration of the Memorial Site
- Archaeological Assessment and Release of Video and Photography
- Partnership and Consultation with the Wakasa Memorial Committee
- Memorial Ceremony at the Topaz site
- Mediation between Topaz Museum and Wakasa Memorial Committee
The points are further elaborated in Marr’s TOPAZ pdf.
National Trust Endorsement
National Trust for Historic Preservation
At face value, the six points seem to be reasonable and functional measures to enable a transparent process of shared decision making. This is confirmed when the Topaz Museum Board turns to the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) for outside consultation, starting on p 56.
But first, what is the NTHP?
“Congress chartered the National Trust in 1949 as a private, nonprofit membership organization to facilitate public participation in historic preservation, and to further the purposes of federal historic preservation laws. With the strong support of over one million members and supporters nationwide, the National Trust works to protect significant places representing our diverse cultural experience by taking direct action and inspiring broad public support.”
Mediation, MOA, Collaboration
In his letter to the Topaz Museum Board on September 21, 2021, Rob Nieweg, vice president of preservation services and outreach for NTHP makes the following points (emphasis added).
- First: “In the National Trust’s experience, consulting with stakeholders and planning with experts would have reduced or avoided harm to the Wakasa Monument and its Memorial Site.”
- Second: NTHP “asks whether the Museum, as the steward of Topaz, intends to consult with the communities of stakeholders and to plan with outside subject-matter experts […] The National Trust anticipates that experienced experts and interested stakeholders would be willing to help if the Museum were to ask.”
- “Third, the National Trust for Historic Preservation supports the newly formed Wakasa Memorial Committee’s constructive six-step proposal for a collaborative solution with the Topaz Museum. To that end, the National Trust highly recommends these initial steps by the Topaz Museum:
- Initiate a mediation process among the Topaz Museum and the Wakasa Memorial Committee, utilizing an independent, professional, and mutually acceptable mediator;
- Through mediation, establish a binding Memorandum of Agreement between the Topaz Museum and the Wakasa Memorial Committee, particularly to formalize communication, consultation, and shared decision making; and,
- That the Topaz Museum publicly commit to collaborate with the Wakasa Memorial Committee to jointly plan the best ways to protect, preserve, and interpret the Wakasa Monument, its Memorial Site, and the Topaz National Historic Landmark.”
Rebuild Stakeholder Trust
Nieweg further clarifies “it seems that purposeful change is necessary to rebuild trust with Survivors, Descendants, and the Japanese American community…”
Nieweg concludes:
“The National Trust for Historic Preservation urges the Topaz Museum to commit itself to the Wakasa Memorial Committee’s six-step proposal of a collaborative and transparent pathway forward.”
Rob Nieweg, VP of Preservation Services and Outreach, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 9/15/21
Topaz Museum Board: No Mediation, No MOA, No Collaboration
“Perpetrators disregarded our views, beliefs, and rights because
colonialism instills the colonizer with a notion of absolute entitlement
— a notion that denies the colonized the respect and rights afforded
other humans.”
James Riding In
In response to the Wakasa Memorial Committee’s request for outside mediation, sent September 7, 2021, the Topaz Museum Board replied on November 3:
“Since the Topaz Museum Board is hopeful that our discussions with the WMC can result in productive outcomes, we believe that any discussion of mediation and of identification of a specific mutually acceptable mediator is premature. In the unlikely event our hopes are misplaced, we would be open at a later time to consider, together with WMC, a facilitated process to expedite a way forward.”
Indeed, the Topaz Museum Board’s hopes were “misplaced”, as evidenced by their own words on April 8, 2022:
“We cannot continue to meet with a committee that professes to work cooperatively on the one hand, and then vilifies the Museum and spews vitriol on the other.”
Despite their own clearly demonstrated need and the urging by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Topaz Museum Board has refused to engage in mediation. No Memorandum of Agreement can be formalized, thus eliminating the possibility of stakeholder collaboration.
Basically, the Topaz Museum Board chooses to avoid any process that would require sharing decision-making power with its primary stakeholder/source community.
It’s the epitome of a colonial power relationship, characterized by:
- Violence: of taking without consent
- Extraction: of community resources for consolidation of private power
- Position: Who speaks, and who is silenced, in the narration of (Japanese American) history
The “End Around”: Community Outreach as PR Sham
Instead of entering into mediation as a good faith step towards rebuilding broken trust, the Topaz Board exercises colonial entitlement by attempting an “end-around” to marginalize the Wakasa Memorial Committee.
By seeking “advice and feedback from the greater Japanese American community” via the PR farce/ethical violation that is the Topaz “Community Outreach” Project, Topaz Museum Board tries, arrogantly and in vain, to summarily dismiss stakeholder concerns via their unilateral and oxymoronic declaration:
“What’s happened in the past is not relevant to how we’re going to move forward.”
Topaz “Community Outreach” Project leader, at “community outreach” meetings held on July 30 in Emeryville and August 13 in San Francisco
Ethically speaking, what does it mean when an archaeologist hired by a white-run museum tells an aggrieved racial group that the recently inflicted colonial violence is not relevant to the “community outreach” project?
History Repeats Itself, unless…
Despite the institutional sloganeering of “Never Again,” Topaz Museum Board is operating with the same one-sided, colonial racial logic that made the camps possible in the first place.
But this is 2022, not 1942, and as more and more light is shined on this racially structured abuse of power (e.g. among state legislators, in mainstream media, professional networks such as American Alliance of Museums and Society for American Archaeology, national funding sources, and so on—i.e. in places where ethical standards matter), things are going to reflect badly on the Topaz Museum Board, if they continue to persist in their supremacist hubris.
A museum, even if privately held, operates as a public trust. There is no “moving forward” without restoring that broken trust, unless that movement is into state or federal receivership.
asians art museum's samurai blog 
Re: Topaz Museum Board’s insistence that “the past is not relevant to how we’re going to move forward” https://twitter.com/common/status/1092969890846191616